THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


WORKS  OF   W.  H.  HUDSON 

THE  PURPLE  LAND 

Introduction  by  Theodore  Roosevelt 

A  CRYSTAL  AGE 

Foreword  by  Clifford  Smyth 

DEAD   MAN'S  PLACK  and 

AN  OLD  THORN 

BIRDS  IN  TOWN  AND  VILLAGE 

Illustrated  in  color 

ADVENTURES  AMONG  BIRDS 

Head  and  Tail  Pieces  after  Bewick 

BIRDS  OF  LA  PLATA  (2  vols.) 

Superbly  Illustrated 

FAR  AWAY  AND  LONG  AGO 

With  Photogravure  Portrait 

IDLE  DAYS  IN  PATAGONIA 

Fully  Illustrated 

A  SHEPHERD'S  LIFE 

Fully  Illustrated 

E.  P.  BUTTON    &    COMPANY 


A  TRAVELLER  IN 
LITTLE  THINGS 


BY 

W.  H.  HUDSON 

AUTHOR  OF  "THE  PURPLE  LAND," 
"  FAR  AWAY  AND  LONG  AGO,"  ETC. 


NEW  YORK 

E.  P.   DUTTON  &  COMPANY 
681  FIFTH  AVENUE 


Copyright,  1921, 
By  E.  P.  BUTTON  &  COMPANY 

All  rightt  reierved 


First  Printing,        Oct.,  1921 
Second  Printing,  Nov.,  1982 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


Coltegt 
Ubran 


H 


AI 


NOTE 

Of  the  sketches  contained  in  this 
volume,  fourteen  have  appeared  in 
the  following  periodicals:  The  New 
Statesman,  The  Saturday  Review,  The 
Nation,  and  The  Cornhill  Magazine 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

I.  How  I  FOUND  MY  TITLE i 

II.  THE  OLD  MAN'S  DELUSION 5 

III.  As  A  TREE  FALLS 9 

IV.  BLOOD:  A  STORY  OF  Two  BROTHERS     .       .       .13 
V.  A  STORY  OF  LONG  DESCENT 26 

VI.  A  SECOND  STORY  OF  Two  BROTHERS     ...     36 

VII.  A  THIRD  STORY  OF  Two  BROTHERS       ...     46 

VIII.  THE  Two  WHITE  HOUSES:  A  MEMORY        .       .55 

IX.  DANDY:    A  STORY  OF  A  DOG 74 

X.  THE  SAMPHIRE  GATHERER 82 

XI.  A  SURREY  VILLAGE 90 

XII.  A  WILTSHIRE  VILLAGE 102 

XIII.  HER  OWN  VILLAGE 121 

XIV.  APPLE  BLOSSOMS  AND  A  LOST  VILLAGE  .       .       .130 
XV.  THE  VANISHING  CURTSEY 137 

XVI.  LITTLE  GIRLS  I  HAVE  MET 146 

XVII.   MlLLICENT  AND  ANOTHER 157 

XVIII.  FRECKLES 170 

XIX.  ON  CROMER  BEACH 179 

XX.  DIMPLES 187 

XXI.  WILD  FLOWERS  AND  LITTLE  GIRLS  .  .  .  .196 

XXII.  A  LITTLE  GIRL  LOST 199 

XXIII.  A  SPRAY  OF  SOUTHERNWOOD 207 

XXIV.  IN    PORCHESTER   CHURCHYARD 214 

XXV.  HOMELESS 217 


viii  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

XXVI.  THE  STORY  OF  A  SKULL 221 

XXVII.  A  STORY  OF  A  WALNUT 230 

XXVIII.  A  STORY  OF  A  JACKDAW 236 

XXIX.  A  WONDERFUL  STORY  OF  A  MACKEREL    .       .  248 

XXX.  STRANGERS  YET 257 

XXXI.  THE  RETURN  OF  THE  CHIFF-CHAFF    .       .       .263 
XXXII.  A  WASP  AT  TABLE 273 

XXXIII.  WASPS  AND  MEN 481 

XXXIV.  IN  CHITTERNE  CHURCHYARD        ....  293 
XXXV.  A  HAUNTER  OF  CHURCHYARDS    ....  301 

XXXVI.  THE  DEAD  AND  THE  LIVING        .       .       .       .321 
XXXVII.  A  STORY  OF  THREE  POEMS 331 


A  TRAVELLER  IN 
LITTLE   THINGS 


A  TRAVELLER  IN   LITTLE 
THINGS 


HOW  I  FOUND  MY  TITLE 

IT  is  surely  a  rare  experience  for  an  unclassi- 
fied man,  past  middle  age,  to  hear  himself 
accurately  and  aptly  described  for  the  first  time 
in  his  life  by  a  perfect  stranger!  This  thing 
happened  to  me  at  Bristol,  some  time  ago,  in  the 
way  I  am  about  to  relate.  I  slept  at  a  Commer- 
cial Hotel,  and  early  next  morning  was  joined 
in  the  big  empty  coffee-room,  smelling  of  stale 
tobacco,  by  an  intensely  respectable-looking  old 
gentleman,  whose  hair  was  of  silvery  whiteness, 
and  who  wore  gold-rimmed  spectacles  and  a 
heavy  gold  watch-chain  with  many  seals  at- 
tached thereto;  whose  linen  was  of  the  finest, 
and  whose  outer  garments,  including  the 
trousers,  were  of  the  newest  and  blackest  broad- 
cloth. A  glossier  and  at  the  same  time  a  more 


2  A  TRAVELLER  IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

venerable-looking  "commercial"  I  had  never 
seen  in  the  west  country,  nor  anywhere  in  the 
three  kingdoms.  He  could  not  have  improved 
his  appearance  if  he  had  been  on  his  way  to 
attend  the  funeral  of  a  millionaire.  But  with 
all  his  superior  look  he  was  quite  affable,  and 
talked  fluently  and  instructively  on  a  variety  of 
themes,  including  trade,  politics,  and  religion. 
Perceiving  that  he  had  taken  me  for  what  I  was 
not — one  of  the  army  in  which  he  served,  but  of 
inferior  rank — I  listened  respectfully  as  became 
me.  Finally  he  led  the  talk  to  the  subject  of 
agriculture,  and  the  condition  and  prospects  of 
farming  in  England.  Here  I  perceived  that  he 
was  on  wholly  unfamiliar  ground,  and  in  return 
for  the  valuable  information  he  had  given  me  on 
other  and  more  important  subjects,  I  proceeded 
to  enlighten  him.  When  I  had  finished  stating 
my  facts  and  views,  he  said:  "I  perceive  that 
you  know  a  great  deal  more  about  the  matter 
than  I  do,  and  I  will  now  tell  you  why  you  know 
more.  You  are  a  traveller  in  little  things — in 
something  very  small — which  takes  you  into  the 
villages  and  hamlets,  where  you  meet  and  con- 
verse with  small  farmers,  innkeepers,  labourers 


HOW  I  FOUND  MY  TITLE  3 

and  their  wives,  with  other  persons  who  live  on 
the  land.  In  this  way  you  get  to  hear  a  good 
deal  about  rent  and  cost  of  living,  and  what  the 
people  are  able  and  not  able  to  do.  Now  I  am 
out  of  all  that;  I  never  go  to  a  village  nor  see  a 
farmer.  I  am  a  traveller  in  something  very 
large.  In  the  south  and  west  I  visit  towns  like 
Salisbury,  Exeter,  Bristol,  Southampton;  then  I 
go  to  the  big  towns  in  the  Midlands  and  the 
North,  and  to  Glasgow  and  Edinburgh;  and 
afterwards  to  Belfast  and  Dublin.  It  would 
simply  be  a  waste  of  time  for  me  to  visit  a  town 
of  less  than  fifty  or  sixty  thousand  inhabitants." 

He  then  gave  me  some  particulars  concerning 
the  large  thing  he  travelled  in;  and  when  I  had 
expressed  all  the  interest  and  admiration  the 
subject  called  for,  he  condescendingly  invited 
me  to  tell  him  something  about  my  own  small 
line. 

Now  this  was  wrong  of  him;  it  was  a  distinct 
contravention  of  an  unwritten  law  among  "Com- 
mercials" that  no  person  must  be  interrogated 
concerning  the  nature  of  his  business.  The  big 
and  the  little  man,  once  inside  the  hostel,  which 
is  their  club  as  well,  are  on  an  equality.  I  did 


4  A  TRAVELLER  IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

not  remind  my  questioner  of  this — I  merely 
smiled  and  said  nothing,  and  he  of  course  under- 
stood and  respected  my  reticence.  With  a 
pleasant  nod  and  a  condescending  let-us-say-no- 
more-about-it  wave  of  the  hand  he  passed  on  to 
other  matters. 

Notwithstanding  that  I  was  amused  at  his 
mistake,  the  label  he  had  supplied  me  with  was 
something  to  be  grateful  for,  and  I  am  now  find- 
ing a  use  for  it.  And  I  think  that  if  he,  my  la- 
beller,  should  see  this  sketch  by  chance  and 
recognise  himself  in  it,  he  will  say  with  his 
pleasant  smile  and  wave  of  the  hand,  "Oh,  that's 
his  line!  Yes,  yes,  I  described  him  rightly 
enough,  thinking  it  haberdashery  or  floral  texts 
for  cottage  bedrooms,  or  something  of  that  kind; 
I  didn't  imagine  he  was  a  traveller  in  anything 
quite  so  small  as  this." 


II 

THE  OLD  MAN'S  DELUSION 

WE  know  that  our  senses  are  subject  to  de- 
cay, that  from  our  middle  years  they 
are  decaying  all  the  time;  but  happily  it  is  as  if 
we  didn't  know  and  didn't  believe.  The  process 
is  too  gradual  to  trouble  us;  we  can  only  say,  at 
fifty  or  sixty  or  seventy,  that  it  is  doubtless  the 
case  that  we  can't  see  as  far  or  as  well,  or  hear 
or  smell  as  sharply,  as  we  did  a  decade  ago,  but 
that  we  don't  notice  the  difference.  Lately  I 
met  an  extreme  case,  that  of  a  man  well  past 
seventy  who  did  not  appear  to  know  that  his 
senses  had  faded  at  all.  He  noticed  that  the 
world  was  not  what  it  had  been  to  him,  as  it  had 
appeared,  for  example,  when  he  was  a  plough- 
boy,  the  time  of  his  life  he  remembered  most 
vividly,  but  it  was  not  the  fault  of  his  senses;  the 
mirror  was  all  right,  it  was  the  world  that  had 
grown  dim. 

I  found  him  at  the  gate  where  I  was  accus- 

5 


6  TRAVELLER  IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

tomed  to  go  of  an  evening  to  watch  the  sun  set 
over  the  sea  of  yellow  corn  and  the  high  green 
elms  beyond,  which  divide  the  cornfields  from 
the  Maidenhead  Thicket.  An  old  agricultural 
labourer,  he  had  a  grey  face  and  grey  hair  and 
throat-beard;  he  stooped  a  good  deal,  and  struck 
me  as  being  very  feeble  and  long  past  work.  But 
he  told  me  that  he  still  did  some  work  in  the 
fields.  The  older  farmers  who  had  employed 
him  for  many  years  past  gave  him  a  little  to  do; 
he  also  had  his  old-age  pension,  and  his  children 
helped  to  keep  him  in  comfort.  He  was  quite 
well  off,  he  said,  compared  to  many.  There  was 
a  subdued  and  sombre  cheerfulness  in  him,  and 
when  I  questioned  him  about  his  early  life,  he 
talked  very  freely  in  his  slow  old  peasant  way. 
He  was  born  in  a  village  in  the  Vale  of  Ayles- 
bury,  and  began  work  as  a  ploughboy  on  a  very 
big  farm.  He  had  a  good  master  and  was  well 
fed,  the  food  being  bacon,  vegetables,  and  home- 
made bread,  also  suet  pudding  three  times  a 
week.  But  what  he  remembered  best  was  a  rice 
pudding  which  came  by  chance  in  his  way  dur- 
ing his  first  year  on  the  farm.  There  was  some 
of  the  pudding  left  in  a  dish  after  the  family 


THE    OLD    MAN'S    DELUSION  7 

had  dined,  and  the  farmer  said  to  his  wife,  "Give 
it  to  the  boy" ;  so  he  had  it,  and  never  tasted  any- 
thing so  nice  in  all  his  life.  How  he  enjoyed 
that  pudding!  He  remembered  it  now  as  if  it 
had  been  yesterday,  though  it  was  sixty-five 
years  ago. 

He  then  went  on  to  talk  of  the  changes  that 
had  been  going  on  in  the  world  since  that  happy 
time;  but  the  greatest  change  of  all  was  in  the 
appearance  of  things.  He  had  had  a  hard  life, 
and  the  hardest  time  was  when  he  was  a  plough- 
boy  and  had  to  work  so  hard  that  he  was  tired 
to  death  at  the  end  of  every  day;  yet  at  four 
o'clock  in  the  morning  he  was  ready  and  glad 
to  get  up  and  go  out  to  work  all  day  again  be- 
cause everything  looked  so  bright,  and  it  made 
him  happy  just  to  look  up  at  the  sky  and  listen 
to  the  birds.  In  those  days  there  were  larks. 
The  number  of  larks  was  wonderful;  the  sound 
of  their  singing  filled  the  whole  air.  He  didn't 
want  any  greater  happiness  than  to  hear  them 
singing  over  his  head.  A  few  days  ago,  not  more 
than  half  a  mile  from  where  we  were  standing, 
he  was  crossing  a  field  when  a  lark  got  up  sing- 
ing near  him  and  went  singing  over  his  head. 


8  A  TRAVELLER  JN  LITTLE  THINGS 

He  stopped  to  listen  and  said  to  himself,  "Well 
now,  that  do  remind  me  of  old  times!" 

"For  you  know,"  he  went  on,  "it  is  a  rare 
thing  to  hear  a  lark  now.  What's  become  of  all 
the  birds  I  used  to  see  I  don't  know.  I  remem- 
ber there  was  a  very  pretty  bird  at  that  time 
called  the  yellow-hammer — a  bird  all  a  shining 
yellow,  the  prettiest  of  all  the  birds."  He  never 
saw  nor  heard  that  bird  now,  he  assured  me. 

That  was  how  the  old  man  talked,  and  I  never 
told  him  that  yellow  hammers  could  be  seen  and 
heard  all  day  long  anywhere  on  the  common  be- 
yond the  green  wall  of  the  elms,  and  that  a  lark 
was  singing  loudly  high  up  over  our  heads  while 
he  was  talking  of  the  larks  he  had  listened  to 
sixty-five  years  ago  in  the  Vale  of  Aylesbury, 
and  saying  that  it  was  a  rare  thing  to  hear  that 
bird  now. 


Ill 

AS  A  TREE  FALLS 

AT  the  Green  Dragon,  where  I  refreshed  my- 
self at  noon  with  bread  and  cheese  and 
beer,  I  was  startlingly  reminded  of  a  simple  and, 
I  suppose,  familiar  psychological  fact,  yet  one 
which  we  are  never  conscious  of  except  at  rare 
moments  when  by  chance  it  is  thrust  upon  us. 

There  are  many  Green  Dragons  in  this  world 
of  wayside  inns,  even  as  there  are  many  White 
Harts,  Red  Lions,  Silent  Women  and  other  in- 
credible things;  but  when  I  add  that  my  inn  is 
in  a  Wiltshire  village,  the  headquarters  of  cer- 
tain gentlemen  who  follow  a  form  of  sport 
which  has  long  been  practically  obsolete  in  this 
country,  and  indeed  throughout  the  civilised 
world,  some  of  my  readers  will  have  no  diffi- 
culty in  identifying  it. 

After  lunching  I  had  an  hour's  pleasant  con- 
versation with  the  genial  landlord  and  his 
buxom  good-looking  wife;  they  were  both  na- 

9 


io         A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

tives  of  a  New  Forest  village  and  glad  to  talk 
about  it  with  one  who  knew  it  intimately.  Dur- 
ing our  talk  I  happened  to  use  the  words — I  for- 
get what  about — "As  a  tree  falls  so  must  it  lie." 
The  landlady  turned  on  me  her  dark  Hamp- 
shire eyes  with  a  sudden  startled  and  pained 
look  in  them,  and  cried:  "Oh,  please  don't  say 
that!' 

"Why  not?"  I  asked.  "It  is  in  the  Bible,  and 
a  quite  common  saying." 

"I  know,"  she  returned,  "but  I  can't  bear  it — 
I  hate  to  hear  it!" 

She  would  say  no  more,  but  my  curiosity  was 
stirred,  and  I  set  about  persuading  her  to  tell 
me.  "Ah,  yes,"  I  said,  "I  can  guess  why.  It's 
something  in  your  past  life — a  sad  story  of  one 
of  your  family — one  very  much  loved  perhaps — 
who  got  into  trouble  and  was  refused  all  help 
from  those  who  might  have  saved  him." 

"No,"  she  said,  "it  all  happened  before  my 
time — long  before.  I  never  knew  her."  And 
then  presently  she  told  me  the  story. 

When  her  father  was  a  young  man  he  lived 
and  worked  with  his  father,  a  farmer  in  Hamp- 
shire and  a  widower.  There  were  several 


AS  A  TREE  FALLS  n 

brothers  and  sisters,  and  one  of  the  sisters, 
named  Eunice,  was  most  loved  by  all  of  them 
and  was  her  father's  favourite  on  account  of  her 
beauty  and  sweet  disposition.  Unfortunately 
she  became  engaged  to  a  young  man  who  was 
not  liked  by  the  father,  and  when  she  refused  to 
break  her  engagement  to  please  him  he  was 
dreadfully  angry  and  told  her  that  if  she  went 
against  him  and  threw  herself  away  on  that 
worthless  fellow  he  would  forbid  her  the  house 
and  would  never  see  or  speak  to  her  again. 

Being  of  an  affectionate  disposition  and  fond 
of  her  father  it  grieved  her  sorely  to  disobey 
him,  but  her  love  compelled  her,  and  by-and-by 
she  went  away  and  was  married  in  a  neighbour- 
ing village  where  her  lover  had  his  home.  It 
was  not  a  happy  marriage,  and  after  a  few 
anxious  years  she  fell  into  a  wasting  illness,  and 
when  it  became  known  to  her  that  she  was  near 
her  end  she  sent  a  message  by  a  brother  to  the 
old  father  to  come  and  see  her  before  she  died. 
She  had  never  ceased  to  love  him,  and  her  one 
insistent  desire  was  to  receive  his  forgiveness 
and  blessing  before  finishing  her  life.  His  an- 
swer was,  "As  a  tree  falls  so  shall  it  lie."  He 


12         A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

would  not  go  near  her.    Shortly  afterwards  the 
unhappy  young  wife  passed  away. 

The  landlady  added  that  the  brother  who  had 
taken  the  message  was  her  father,  that  he  was 
now  eighty-two  years  old  and  still  spoke  of  his 
long  dead  and  greatly  loved  sister,  and  always 
said  he  had  never  forgiven  and  would  never 
forgive  his  father,  dead  half  a  century  ago,  for 
having  refused  to  go  to  his  dying  daughter  and 
for  speaking  those  cruel  words. 


IV 
"BLOOD" 

A  STORY  OF  TWO  BROTHERS 

\  CERTAIN  titled  lady,  great  in  the  social 
<**•  world,  was  walking  down  the  village 
street  between  two  ladies  of  the  village,  and 
their  conversation  was  about  some  person  known 
to  the  two  who  had  behaved  in  the  noblest  man- 
ner in  difficult  circumstances,  and  the  talk  ran 
on  between  the  two  like  a  duet,  the  great  lady 
mostly  silent  and  paying  but  little  attention  to 
it.  At  length  the  subject  was  exhausted,  and  as 
a  proper  conclusion  to  round  the  discourse  off, 
one  of  them  remarked :  "It  is  what  I  have  always 
said, — there's  nothing  like  blood !"  Whereupon 
the  great  person  returned,  "I  don't  agree  with 
you:  it  strikes  me  you  two  are  always  praising 
blood,  and  I  think  it  perfectly  horrid.  The  very 
sight  of  a  black  pudding  for  instance  turns  me 
sick  and  makes  me  want  to  be  a  vegetarian." 

13 


i4          A   TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

The  others  smiled  and  laboriously  explained 
that  they  were  not  praising  blood  as  an  article 
of  diet,. but  had  used  the  word  in  its  other  and 
partly  metamorphical  sense.  They  simply 
meant  that  as  a  rule  persons  of  good  blood  or  of 
old  families  had  better  qualities  and  a  higher 
standard  of  conduct  and  action  than  others. 

The  other  listened  and  said  nothing,  for  al- 
though of  good  blood  herself  she  was  an  out- 
and-out  democrat,  a  burning  Radical,  burning 
bright  in  the  forests  of  the  night  of  dark  old 
England,  and  she  considered  that  all  these  lofty 
notions  about  old  families  and  higher  standards 
were  confined  to  those  who  knew  little  or  noth- 
ing about  the  life  of  the  upper  classes. 

She,  the  aristocrat,  was  wrong,  and  the  two 
village  ladies,  members  of  the  middle  class,  were 
right,  although  they  were  without  a  sense  of 
humour  and  did  not  know  that  their  dis- 
tinguished friend  was  poking  a  little  fun  at  them 
when  she  spoke  about  black  puddings. 

They  were  right,  and  it  was  never  necessary 
for  Herbert  Spencer  to  tell  us  that  the  world  is 
right  in  looking  for  nobler  motives  and  ideals, 
a  higher  standard  of  conduct,  better,  sweeter 


"BLOOD"  15 

manners,  from  those  who  are  highly  placed  than 
from  the  ruck  of  men;  and  as  this  higher,  better 
life,  which  is  only  possible  in  the  leisured 
classes,  is  correlated  with  the  "aspects  which 
please,"  the  regular  features  and  personal 
beauty,  the  conclusion  is  the  beauty  and  good- 
ness or  "inward  perfections"  are  correlated. 

All  this  is  common,  universal  knowledge:  to 
all  men  of  all  races  and  in  all  parts  of  the  world 
it  comes  as  a  shock  to  hear  that  a  person  of  a 
noble  countenance  has  been  guilty  of  an  ignoble 
action.  It  is  only  the  ugly  (and  bad)  who 
fondly  cherish  the  delusion  that  beauty  doesn't 
matter,  that  it  is  only  skin-deep  and  the  rest  of  it. 

Here  now  arises  a  curious  question,  the  sub- 
ject of  this  little  paper.  When  a  good  old 
family,  of  good  character,  falls  on  evil  days  and 
is  eventually  submerged  in  the  classes  beneath, 
we  know  that  the  aspects  which  please,  the  good 
features  and  expression,  will  often  persist  for 
long  generations.  Now  this  submerging  process 
is  perpetually  going  on  all  over  the  land  and  so 
it  has  been  for  centuries.  We  notice  from  year 
to  year  the  rise  from  the  ranks  of  numberless 
men  to  the  highest  positions,  who  are  our  leaders 


16          A   TRAVELLER   IN   LITTLE   THINGS 

and  legislators,  owners  of  great  estates  who 
found  great  families  and  receive  titles.  But  we 
do  not  notice  the  corresponding  decline  and  final 
disappearance  of  those  who  were  highly  placed, 
since  this  is  a  more  gradual  process  and  has 
nothing  sensational  about  it.  Yet  the  two  proc- 
esses are  equally  great  and  far-reaching  in  their 
effects,  and  are  like  those  two  of  Elaboration 
and  Degeneration  which  go  on  side  by  side  for 
ever  in  nature,  in  the  animal  world;  and  like 
darkness  and  light  and  heat  and  cold  in  the  phys- 
ical world. 

As  a  fact,  the  country  is  full  of  the  descend- 
ants of  families  that  have  "died  out."  How  long 
it  takes  to  blot  out  or  blur  the  finer  features  and 
expression  we  do  not  know,  and  the  time  prob- 
ably varies  according  to  the  length  of  the  period 
during  which  the  family  existed  in  its  higher 
phase.  The  question  which  confronts  us  is: 
Does  the  higher  or  better  nature,  the  "inward 
perfections"  which  are  correlated  with  the  as- 
pects which  please,  endure  too,  or  do  those  who 
fall  from  their  own  class  degenerate  morally  to 
the  level  of  the  people  they  live  and  are  one 
with? 


"BLOOD"  17 

It  is  a  nice  question.  In  Sussex,  with  Mr.  M. 
A.  Lower,  who  has  written  about  the  vanished 
or  submerged  families  of  that  county,  for  my 
guide  as  to  names,  I  have  sought  out  persons  of 
a  very  humble  condition,  some  who  were  shep- 
herds and  agricultural  labourers,  and  have  been 
surprised  at  the  good  faces  of  many  of  them,  the 
fine,  even  noble,  features  and  expression,  and 
with  these  an  exceptionally  fine  character.  La- 
bourers on  the  lands  that  were  once  owned  by 
their  forefathers,  and  children  of  long  genera- 
tions of  labourers,  yet  still  exhibiting  the  marks 
of  their  aristocratic  descent,  the  fine  features 
and  expression  and  the  fine  moral  qualities  with 
which  they  are  correlated. 

I  will  now  give  in  illustration  an  old  South 
American  experience,  an  example,  which  deeply 
impressed  me  at  the  time,  of  the  sharp  contrast 
between  a  remote  descendant  of  aristocrats  and 
a  child  of  the  people  in  a  country  where  class 
distinctions  have  long  ceased  to  exist. 

It  happened  that  I  went  to  stay  at  a  cattle 
ranch  for  two  or  three  months  one  summer,  in 
a  part  of  the  country  new  to  me,  where  I  knew 
scarcely  anyone.  It  was  a  good  spot  for  my  pur- 


i8         A  TRAVELLER  IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

pose,  which  was  bird  study,  and  this  wholly  oc- 
cupied my  mind.  By-and-by  I  heard  about  two 
brothers,  aged  respectively  twenty-three  and 
twenty-four  years,  who  lived  in  the  neighbour- 
hood on  a  cattle  ranch  inherited  from  their 
father,  who  had  died  young.  They  had  no  rela- 
tions and  were  the  last  of  their  name  in  that  part 
of  the  country,  and  their  grazing  land  was  but  a 
remnant  of  the  estate  as  it  had  been  a  century 
before.  The  name  of  the  brothers  first  attracted 
my  attention,  for  it  was  that  of  an  old  highly- 
distinguished  family  of  Spain,  two  or  three  of 
whose  adventurous  sons  had  gone  to  South 
America  early  in  the  seventeenth  century  to  seek 
their  fortunes,  and  had  settled  there.  The  real 
name  need  not  be  stated:  I  will  call  it  de  la 
Rosa,  which  will  serve  as  well  as  another. 
Knowing  something  of  the  ancient  history  of 
the  family  I  became  curious  to  meet  the 
brothers,  just  to  see  what  sort  of  men  they  were 
who  had  blue  blood  and  yet  lived,  as  their  for- 
bears had  done  for  generations,  in  the  rough 
primitive  manner  of  the  gauchos — the  cattle- 
tending  horsemen  of  the  pampas.  A  little  later 
I  met  the  younger  brother  at  a  house  in  the  vil- 


"BLOOD"  19 

lage  a  few  miles  from  the  ranch  I  was  staying 
at.  His  name  was  Cyril;  the  elder  was  Am- 
brose. He  was  certainly  a  very  fine  fellow  in 
appearance,  tall  and  strongly  built,  with  a  high 
colour  on  his  open  genial  countenance  and  a 
smile  always  playing  about  the  corners  of  his 
rather  large  sensual  mouth  and  in  his  greenish- 
hazel  eyes;  but  of  the  noble  ancestry  there  was 
no  faintest  trace.  His  features  were  those  of  the 
unameliorated  peasant,  as  he  may  be  seen  in  any 
European  country,  and  in  this  country,  in  Ire- 
land particularly,  but  with  us  he  is  not  so  com- 
mon. It  would  seem  that  in  England  there  is  a 
larger  mixture  of  better  blood,  or  that  the  im- 
provements in  features  due  to  improved  condi- 
tions, physical  and  moral,  have  gone  further. 
At  all  events,  one  may  look  at  a  crowd  anywhere 
\n  England  and  see  only  a  face  here  and  there  of 
the  unmodified  plebeian  type.  In  a  very  large 
majority  the  forehead  will  be  less  low  and  nar- 
row, the  nose  less  coarse  with  less  wide-spread- 
ing alae,  the  depression  in  the  bridge  not  so  deep, 
the  mouth  not  so  large  nor  the  jowl  so  heavy. 
These  marks  of  the  unimproved  adult  are  pres- 
ent in  all  infants  at  birth.  Lady  Clara  Vere  de 


ao         A  TRAVELLER  IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

Vere's  little  bantling  is  in  a  sense  not  hers  at  all 
but  the  child  of  some  ugly  antique  race;  of  a 
Palaeolithic  mother,  let  us  say,  who  lived  before 
the  last  Glacial  epoch  and  was  not  very  much 
better-looking  herself  than  an  orang-utan.  It  is 
only  when  the  bony  and  cartilaginous  frame- 
work, with  the  muscular  covering  of  the  face, 
becomes  modified,  and  the  wrinkled  brown 
visage  of  the  ancient  pigmy  grows  white  and 
smooth,  that  it  can  be  recognised  as  Lady  Clara's 
own  offspring.  The  infant  is  ugly,  and  where 
the  infantile  features  survive  in  the  adult  the 
man  is  and  must  be  ugly  too,  unless  the  expres- 
sion is  good.  Thus,  we  may  know  numbers  of 
persons  who  would  certainly  be  ugly  but  for 
the  redeeming  expression;  and  this  good  expres- 
sion, which  is  "feature  in  the  making,"  is,  like 
good  features,  an  "outward  sign  of  inward  per- 
fections." 

To  continue  with  the  description  of  my  young 
gentleman  of  blue  blood  and  plebeian  counte- 
nance, his  expression  not  only  saved  him  from 
ugliness  but  made  him  singularly  attractive,  it 
revealed  a  good  nature,  friendliness,  love  of  his 
fellows,  sincerity,  and  other  pleasing  qualities. 


"BLOOD"  21 

After  meeting  and  conversing  with  him  I  was 
not  surprised  to  hear  that  he  was  universally 
liked,  but  regarding  him  critically  I  could  not 
say  that  his  manner  was  perfect.  He  was  too 
self-conscious,  too  anxious  to  shine,  too  vain  of 
his  personal  appearance,  of  his  wit,  his  rich 
dress,  his  position  as  a  de  la  Rosa  and  a  land- 
owner. There  was  even  a  vulgarity  in  him,  such 
as  one  looks  for  in  a  person  risen  from  the  lower 
orders  but  does  not  expect  in  the  descendant  of 
an  ancient  and  once  lustrous  family,  however 
much  decayed  and  impoverished,  or  submerged. 
Shortly  afterwards  a  gossipy  old  native  estan- 
ciero,  who  lived  close  by,  while  sitting  in  our 
kitchen  sipping  mate,  began  talking  freely  about 
his  neighbour's  lives  and  characters,  and  I  told 
him  I  had  felt  interested  in  the  brothers  de  la 
Rosa;  partly  on  account  of  the  great  affection 
these  two  had  for  one  another,  which  was  like 
an  ideal  friendship;  and  in  part  too  on  account 
of  the  ancient  history  of  the  family  they  came 
from.  I  had  met  one  of  them,  I  told  him, — 
Cyril — a  very  fine  fellow,  but  in  some  respects 
he  was  not  exactly  like  my  preconceived  idea  of 
a  de  la  Rosa. 


22         A  TRAVELLER  IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

"No,  and  he  isn't  one!"  shouted  the  old  fel- 
low, with  a  great  laugh;  and  more  than  de- 
lighted at  having  a  subject  presented  to  him 
and  at  his  capture  of  a  fresh  listener,  he  pro- 
ceeded to  give  me  an  intimate  history  of  the 
brothers. 

The  father,  who  was  a  fine  and  a  lovable 
man,  married  early,  and  his  young  wife  died  in 
giving  birth  to  their  only  child — Ambrose.  He 
did  not  marry  again:  he  was  exceedingly  fond 
of  his  child  and  was  both  father  and  mother  to 
it  and  kept  it  with  him  until  the  boy  was  about 
nine  years  old,  and  then  determined  to  send  him 
to  Buenos  Ayres  to  give  him  a  year's  schooling. 
He  himself  had  been  taught  to  read  as  a  small 
boy,  also  to  write  a  letter,  but  he  did  not  think 
himself  equal  to  teach  the  boy,  and  so  for  a  time 
they  would  have  to  be  separated. 

Meanwhile  the  boy  had  picked  up  with  Cyril, 
a  little  waif  in  rags,  the  bastard  child  of  a 
woman  who  had  gone  away  and  left  him  in 
infancy  to  the  mercy  of  others.  He  had  been 
reared  in  the  hovel  of  a  poor  gaucho  on  the  de  la 
Rosa  land,  but  the  poor  orphan,  although  the 
dirtiest,  raggedest,  most  mischievous  little  beg- 


"BLOOD"  23 

gar  in  the  land,  was  an  attractive  child,  intelli- 
gent, full  of  fun,  and  of  an  adventurous  spirit. 
Half  his  days  were  spent  miles  from  home,  wad- 
ing through  the  vast  reedy  and  rushy  marshes 
in  the  neighbourhood,  hunting  for  birds'  nests. 
Little  Ambrose,  with  no  child  companion  at 
home,  where  his  life  had  been  made  too  soft  for 
him,  was  exceedingly  happy  with  his  wild  com- 
panion, and  they  were  often  absent  together  in 
the  marshes  for  a  whole  day,  to  the  great  anxiety 
of  the  father.  But  he  could  not  separate  them, 
because  he  could  not  endure  to  see  the  misery 
of  his  boy  when  they  were  forcibly  kept  apart. 
Nor  could  he  forbid  his  child  from  heaping 
gifts  in  food  and  clothes  and  toys  or  whatever 
he  had,  on  his  little  playmate.  Nor  did  the 
trouble  cease  when  the  time  came  now  for  the 
boy  to  be  sent  from  home  to  learn  his  letters :  his 
grief  at  the  prospect  of  being  separated  from 
his  companion  was  too  much  for  the  father,  and 
he  eventually  sent  them  together  to  the  city, 
where  they  spent  a  year  or  two  and  came  back  as 
devoted  to  one  another  as  when  they  went  away. 
From  that  time  Cyril  lived  with  them,  and 
eventually  de  la  Rosa  adopted  him,  and  to  make 


24         A  TRAVELLER  IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

his  son  happy  he  left  all  he  possessed  to  be 
equally  divided  at  his  death  between  them.  He 
was  in  bad  health,  and  died  when  Ambrose  was 
fifteen  and  Cyril  fourteen;  from  that  time  they 
were  their  own  masters  and  refused  to  have  any 
division  of  their  inheritance  but  continued  to 
live  together;  and  had  so  continued  for  upwards 
of  ten  years. 

Shortly  after  hearing  this  history  I  met  the 
brothers  together  at  a  house  in  the  village,  and 
a  greater  contrast  between  two  men  it  would  be 
impossible  to  imagine.  They  were  alike  only 
in  both  being  big,  well-shaped,  handsome,  and 
well-dressed  men,  but  in  their  faces  they  had  the 
stamp  of  widely  separated  classes,  and  differed 
as  much  as  if  they  had  belonged  to  distinct  spe- 
cies. Cyril,  with  a  coarse,  high-coloured  skin 
and  the  primitive  features  I  have  described; 
Ambrose,  with  a  pale  dark  skin  of  a  silky  tex- 
ture, an  oval  face  and  classic  features — fore- 
head, nose,  mouth  and  chin,  and  his  ears  small 
and  lying  against  his  head,  not  sticking  out  like 
handles  as  in  his  brother;  he  had  black  hair  and 
grey  eyes.  It  was  the  face  of  an  aristocrat,  of  a 
man  of  blue  blood,  or  of  good  blood,  of  an  an- 


"BLOOD"  25 

cient  family;  and  in  his  manner  too  he  was  a 
perfect  contrast  to  his  brother  and  friend.  There 
was  no  trace  of  vulgarity  in  him;  he  was  not 
self-conscious,  not  anxious  to  shine;  he  was  mod- 
esty itself,  and  in  his  speech  and  manner  and 
appearance  he  was,  to  put  it  all  in  one  word,  a 
gentleman. 

Seeing  them  together  I  was  more  amazed 
than  ever  at  the  fact  of  their  extraordinary  affec- 
tion for  each  other,  their  perfect  amity  which 
had  lasted  so  many  years  without  a  rift,  which 
nothing  could  break,  as  people  said,  except  a 
woman. 

But  the  woman  who  would  break  or  shatter 
it  had  not  yet  appeared  on  the  horizon,  nor  do  I 
know  whether  she  ever  appeared  or  not,  since 
after  leaving  the  neighbourhood  I  heard  no 
more  of  the  brothers  de  la  Rosa. 


A  STORY  OF  LONG  DESCENT 

IT  was  rudely  borne  in  upon  me  that  there 
was  another  side  to  the  shield.  I  was  too 
much  immersed  in  my  own  thoughts  to  note  the 
peculiar  character  of  the  small  remote  old- 
world  town  I  came  to  in  the  afternoon;  next 
day  was  Sunday,  and  on  my  way  to  the  church 
to  attend  morning  service,  it  struck  me  as  one 
of  the  oldest-looking  of  the  small  old  towns  I 
had  stumbled  upon  in  my  rambles  in  this 
ancient  land.  There  was  the  wide  vacant  space 
where  doubtless  meetings  had  taken  place  for  a 
thousand  years,  and  the  steep  narrow  crooked 
mediaeval  streets,  and  here  and  there  some 
stately  building  rising  like  a  castle  above  the 
humble  cottage  houses  clustering  round  it  as  if 
for  protection.  Best  of  all  was  the  church  with 
its  noble  tower  where  a  peal  of  big  bells  were 
just  now  flooding  the  whole  place  with  their 
glorious  noise. 

It  was  even  better  when,  inside,  I  rose  from 
26 


A  STORY  OF  LONG  DESCENT  27 

my  knees  and  looked  about  me,  to  find  myself  in 
an  ideal  interior,  the  kind  I  love  best;  rich  in 
metal  and  glass  and  old  carved  wood,  the  orna- 
ments which  the  good  Methody  would  scorn- 
fully put  in  the  hay  and  stubble  category,  but 
which  owing  to  long  use  and  associations  have 
acquired  for  others  a  symbolic  and  spiritual 
significance.  The  beauty  and  richness  were  all 
the  fresher  for  the  dimness,  and  the  light  was 
dim  because  it  filtered  through  old  oxydised 
stained  glass  of  that  unparalleled  loveliness  of 
colour  which  time  alone  can  impart.  It  was, 
excepting  in  vastness,  like  a  cathedral  interior, 
and  in  some  ways  better  than  even  the  best  of 
these  great  fanes,  wonderful  as  they  are.  Here, 
recalling  them,  one  could  venture  to  criticise 
and  name  their  several  deficits: — a  Wells  di- 
vided, a  ponderous  Ely,  a  vacant  and  cold  Can- 
terbury, a  too  light  and  airy  Salisbury,  and  so 
on  even  to  Exeter,  supreme  in  beauty,  spoilt 
by  a  monstrous  organ  in  the  wrong  place.  That 
wood  and  metal  giant,  standing  as  a  stone  bridge 
to  mock  the  eyes'  efforts  to  dodge  past  it  and 
have  sight  of  the  exquisite  choir  beyond,  and 
of  an  east  window  through  which  the  humble 


28         A   TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

worshipper  in  the  nave  might  hope,  in  some 
rare  mystical  moment,  to  catch  a  glimpse  of  the 
far  Heavenly  country  beyond. 

I  also  noticed  when  looking  round  that  it  was 
an  interior  rich  in  memorials  to  the  long  dead 
— old  brasses  and  stone  tablets  on  the  walls,  and 
some  large  monuments.  By  chance  the  most  im- 
posing of  the  tombs  was  so  near  my  seat  that 
with  little  difficulty  I  succeeded  in  reading  and 
committing  to  memory  the  whole  contents  of 
the  very  long  inscription  cut  in  deep  letters  on 
the  hard  white  stone.  It  was  to  the  memory  of 
Sir  Ranulph  Damarell,  who  died  in  1531,  and 
was  the  head  of  a  family  long  settled  in  those 
parts,  lord  of  the  manor  and  many  other  things. 
On  more  than  one  occasion  he  raised  a  troop 
from  his  own  people  and  commanded  it  himself, 
fighting  for  his  king  and  country  both  in  and 
out  of  England.  He  was,  moreover,  a  friend 
of  the  king  and  his  counsellor,  and  universally 
esteemed  for  his  virtues  and  valour;  greatly 
loved  by  all  his  people,  especially  by  the  poor 
and  suffering,  on  account  of  his  generosity  and 
kindness  of  heart. 

A  very  glorious  record,  and  by-and-by  I  be- 


29 

lieved  every  word  of  it.  For  after  reading  the 
inscription  I  began  to  examine  the  effigy  in 
marble  of  the  man  himself  which  surmounted 
the  tomb.  He  was  lying  extended  full  length, 
six  feet  and  five  inches,  his  head  on  a  low  pil- 
low, his  right  hand  grasping  the  handle  of  his 
drawn  sword.  The  more  I  looked  at  it,  both 
during  and  after  the  service,  the  more  convinced 
I  became  that  this  was  no  mere  conventional 
figure  made  by  some  lapidary  long  after  the  sub- 
ject's death,  but  was  the  work  of  an  inspired 
artist,  an  exact  portrait  of  the  man,  even  to  his 
stature,  and  that  he  had  succeeded  in  giving  to 
the  countenance  the  very  expression  of  the  liv- 
ing Sir  Ranulph.  And  what  it  expressed  was 
power  and  authority  and,  with  it,  spirituality. 
A  noble  countenance  with  a  fine  forehead  and 
nose,  the  lower  part  of  the  face  covered  with 
the  beard,  and  long  hair  that  fell  to  the  shoulders. 
It  produced  a  feeling  such  as  I  have  when- 
ever I  stand  before  a  certain  sixteenth-century 
portrait  in  the  National  Gallery:  a  sense  or  an 
illusion  of  being  in  the  presence  of  a  living 
person  with  whom  I  am  engaged  in  a  wordless 
conversation,  and  who  is  revealing  his  inmost 


30         A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

soul  to  me.  And  it  is  only  the  work  of  a  genius 
that  can  affect  you  in  that  way. 

Quitting  the  church  I  remembered  with  sat- 
isfaction that  my  hostess  at  the  quiet  home-like 
family  hotel  where  I  had  put  up,  was  an  edu- 
cated intelligent  woman  (good-looking,  too), 
and  that  she  would  no  doubt  be  able  to  tell  me 
something  of  the  old  history  of  the  town  and 
particularly  of  Sir  Ranulph.  For  this  marble 
man,  this  knight  of  ancient  days,  had  taken  pos- 
session of  me  and  I  could  think  of  nothing  else. 

At  luncheon  we  met  as  in  a  private  house  at 
our  table  with  our  nice  hostess  at  the  head,  and 
beside  her  three  or  four  guests  staying  in  the 
house;  a  few  day  visitors  to  the  town  came  in 
and  joined  us.  Next  to  me  I  had  a  young  New 
Zealand  officer  whose  story  I  had  heard  with 
painful  interest  the  previous  evening.  Like  so 
many  of  the  New  Zealanders  I  had  met  before, 
he  was  a  splendid  young  fellow;  but  he  had  been 
terribly  gassed  at  the  front  and  had  been  told 
by  the  doctors  that  he  would  not  be  fit  to  go  back 
even  if  the  war  lasted  another  year,  and  we  were 
then  well  through  the  third.  The  way  the  poi- 
son in  his  lungs  affected  him  was  curious.  He 


A  STORY  OF  LONG  DESCENT  31 

had  his  bad  periods  when  for  a  fortnight  or  so 
he  would  lie  in  his  hospital  suffering  much  and 
terribly  depressed,  and  at  such  time  black  spots 
would  appear  all  over  his  chest  and  neck  and 
arms  so  that  he  would  be  spotted  like  a  pard. 
Then  the  spots  would  fade  and  he  would  rise 
apparently  well,  and  being  of  an  energetic  dis- 
position, was  allowed  to  do  local  war  work. 

On  the  other  side  of  the  table  facing  us  sat  a 
lady  and  gentleman  who  had  come  in  together 
for  luncheon.  A  slim  lady  of  about  thirty,  with 
a  well-shaped  but  colourless  face  and  very 
bright  intelligent  eyes.  She  was  a  lively  talker, 
but  her  companion,  a  short  fat  man  with  a  round 
apple  face  and  cheeks  of  an  intensely  red  colour 
and  a  black  moustache,  was  reticent,  and  when 
addressed  directly  replied  in  monosyllables. 
He  gave  his  undivided  attention  to  the  thing 
on  his  plate. 

The  young  officer  talked  to  me  of  his  country, 
describing  with  enthusiasm  his  own  district 
which  he  averred  contained  the  finest  mountain 
and  forest  scenery  in  New  Zealand.  The  lady 
sitting  opposite  began  to  listen  and  soon  cut  in 
to  say  she  knew  it  all  well,  and  agreed  in  all  he 


32         A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

said  in  praise  of  the  scenery.  She  had  spent 
weeks  of  delight  among  those  great  forests  and 
mountains.  Was  she  then  his  country-woman? 
he  asked.  Oh,  no,  she  was  English  but  had 
travelled  extensively  and  knew  a  great  deal  of 
New  Zealand.  And  after  exhausting  this  sub- 
ject the  conversation,  which  had  become  gen- 
eral, drifted  into  others,  and  presently  we  were 
all  comparing  notes  about  our  experience  of  the 
late  great  frost.  Here  I  had  my  say  about  what 
had  happened  in  the  village  I  had  been  staying 
in.  The  prolonged  frost,  I  said,  had  killed  all 
or  most  of  the  birds  in  the  open  country  round 
us,  but  in  the  village  itself  a  curious  thing  had 
happened  to  save  the  birds  of  the  place.  It  was 
a  change  of  feeling  in  the  people,  who  are  by 
nature  or  training  great  persecutors  of  birds. 
The  sight  of  them  dying  of  starvation  had 
aroused  a  sentiment  of  compassion,  and  all  the 
villagers,  men,  women,  and  children,  even  to  the 
roughest  bush-beating  boys,  started  feeding 
them,  with  the  result  that  the  birds  quickly  be- 
came tame  and  spent  their  whole  day  flying 
from  house  to  house,  visiting  every  yard  and 
perching  on  the  window-sills. 


A  STORY  OF  LONG  DESCENT  33 

While  I  was  speaking  the  gentleman  opposite 
put  down  his  knife  and  fork  and  gazed  steadily 
at  me  with  a  smile  on  his  red-apple  face,  and 
when  I  concluded  he  exploded  in  a  half-sup- 
pressed sniggerging  laugh. 

It  annoyed  me,  and  I  remarked  rather  sharply 
that  I  didn't  see  what  there  was  to  laugh  at  in 
what  I  had  told  them.  Then  the  lady  with 
ready  tact  interposed  to  say  she  had  been  deeply 
interested  in  my  experiences,  and  went  on  to 
tell  what  she  had  done  to  save  the  birds  in  her 
own  place;  and  her  companion,  taking  it  per- 
haps as  a  snub  to  himself  from  her,  picked  up 
his  knife  and  fork  and  went  on  with  his 
luncheon,  and  never  opened  his  mouth  to  speak 
again.  Or,  at  all  events,  not  till  he  had  quite 
finished  his  meal. 

By-and-by,  when  I  found  an  opportunity  of 
speaking  to  our  hostess,  I  asked  her  who  that 
charming  lady  was,  and  she  told  me  she  was  a 
Miss  Somebody — I  forget  the  name — a  native 
of  the  town,  also  that  she  was  a  great  favourite 
there  and  was  loved  by  everyone,  rich  and  poor, 
and  that  she  had  been  a  very  hard  worker  ever 


34         A  TRAVELLER  IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

since  the  war  began,  and  had  inspired  all  the 
women  in  the  place  to  work. 

"And  who,"  I  asked,  "was  the  fellow  who 
brought  her  in  to  lunch — a  relative  or  a  lover?" 

"Oh,  no,  no  relation  and  certainly  not  a  lover. 
I  doubt  if  she  would  have  him  if  he  wanted  her, 
in  spite  of  his  position." 

"I  don't  wonder  at  that — a  perfect  clcwn! 
And  who  is  he?" 

"Oh,  didn't  you  know!  Sir  Ranulph  Dama- 
rell." 

"Good  Lord!"  I  gasped.  "That  your  great 
man — lord  of  the  manor  and  what  not!  He 
may  bear  the  name,  but  I'm  certain  he's  not  a 
descendant  of  the  Sir  Ranulph  whose  monument 
is  in  your  church." 

"Oh,  yes,  he  is,"  she  replied.  "I  believe  there 
has  never  been  a  break  in  the  line  from  father 
to  son  since  that  man's  day.  They  were  all 
knights  in  the  old  time,  but  for  the  last  two 
centuries  or  so  have  been  baronets." 

"Good  Lord!"  I  exclaimed  again.  "And 
please  tell  me  what  is  he — what  does  he  do? 
What  is  his  distinction?" 

"His  distinction  for  me,"  she  smilingly  re- 


A  STORY  OF  LONG  DESCENT  35 

plied,  "is  that  he  prefers  my  house  to  have  his 
luncheon  in  after  Sunday  morning  service.  He 
knows  where  he  can  get  good  cooking.  And  as 
a  rule  he  invites  some  friend  in  the  town  to 
lunch  with  him,  so  that  should  there  be  any  con- 
versation at  table  his  guest  can  speak  for  both 
and  leave  him  quite  free  to  enjoy  his  food." 

"And  what  part  does  he  take  in  politics  and 
public  affairs — how  does  he  stand  among  your 
leading  men?" 

Her  answer  was  that  he  had  never  taken  any 
part  in  politics — had  never  been  or  desired  to  be 
in  Parliament  or  in  the  County  Council,  and 
was  not  even  a  J.P.,  nor  had  he  done  anything 
for  his  country  during  the  war.  Nor  was  he  a 
sportsman.  He  was  simply  a  country  gentle- 
man, and  every  morning  he  took  a  ride  or  walk, 
mainly  she  supposed  to  give  him  a  better  ap- 
petite for  his  luncheon.  And  he  was  a  good 
landlord  to  his  tenants  and  he  was  respected  by 
everybody  and  no  one  had  ever  said  a  word 
against  him. 

There  was  nothing  now  for  me  to  say  except 
"Good  Lord!"  so  I  said  it  once  more,  and  that 
made  three  times. 


VI 

A  SECOND  STORY  OF  TWO 
BROTHERS 

HORTLY  after  writing  the  story  of  two 
brothers  in  the  last  part  but  one  I  was  re- 
minded of  another  strange  story  of  two  brothers 
in  that  same  distant  land,  which  I  heard  years 
ago  and  had  forgotten.  It  now  came  back  to  me 
in  a  newspaper  from  Miami,  of  all  places  in 
the  world,  sent  me  by  a  correspondent  in  that 
town.  He — Mr.  J.  L.  Rodger — some  time  ago 
when  reading  an  autobiographical  book  of 
mine  made  the  discovery  that  we  were  natives 
of  the  same  place  in  the  Argentine  pampas — 
that  the  homes  where  we  respectively  first  saw 
the  light  stood  but  a  couple  of  hours'  ride  on 
horseback  apart.  But  we  were  not  born  on  the 
same  day  and  so  missed  meeting  in  our  youth; 
then  left  our  homes,  and  he,  after  wide  wander- 
ings, found  an  earthly  paradise  in  Florida  to 
dwell  in.  So  that  now  that  we  have  in  a  sense 
met  we  have  the  Atlantic  between  us. 

36 


A  SECOND  STORY  OF  TWO  BROTHERS   37 

He  has  been  contributing  some  recollections 
of  the  pampas  to  the  Miami  paper,  and  told  this 
story  of  two  brothers  among  other  strange  hap- 
penings. I  tell  it  in  my  own  way  more  briefly. 

It  begins  in  the  early  fifties  and  ends  thirty 
years  later  in  the  early  eighties  of  last  century. 
It  then  found  its  way  into  the  Buenos  Ayres 
newspapers,  and  I  heard  it  at  the  time  but  had 
utterly  forgotten  it  until  this  Florida  paper 
came  into  my  hand. 

In  the  fifties  a  Mr.  Gilmour,  a  Scotch  settler, 
had  a  sheep  and  cattle  ranch  on  the  pampas  far 
south  of  Buenos  Ayres,  near  the  Atlantic  coast. 
He  lived  there  with  his  family,  and  one  of  the 
children,  aged  five,  was  a  bright  active  little 
fellow  and  was  regarded  with  affection  by  one 
of  the  hired  native  cattlemen,  who  taught  the 
child  to  ride  on  a  pony,  and  taught  him  so  well 
that  even  at  that  tender  age  the  boy  could  follow 
his  teacher  and  guide  at  a  fast  gallop  over  the 
plain.  One  day  Mr.  Gilmour  fell  out  with  the 
man  on  account  of  some  dereliction  of  duty,  and 
after  some  hot  words  between  them  discharged 
him  there  and  then.  The  young  fellow  mounted 


38         A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

his  horse  and  rode  off  vowing  vengeance,  and 
on  that  very  day  the  child  disappeared.  The 
pony  on  which  he  had  gone  out  riding  came 
home,  and  as  it  was  supposed  that  the  little  boy 
had  been  thrown  or  fallen  off,  a  search  was 
made  all  over  the  estate  and  continued  for  days 
without  result.  Eventually  some  of  the  child's 
clothing  was  found  on  the  beach,  and  it  was  con- 
jectured that  the  young  native  had  taken  the 
child  there  and  drowned  him  and  left  the 
clothes  to  let  the  Gilmours  know  that  he  had 
had  his  revenge.  But  there  was  room  for  doubt, 
as  the  body  was  never  found,  and  they  finally 
came  to  think  that  the  clothes  had  been  left 
there  to  deceive  them,  and  that  as  the  man  had 
been  so  fond  of  the  child  he  had  carried  him  off. 
This  belief  started  them  on  a  wider  and  longer 
quest;  they  invoked  the  aid  of  the  authori- 
ties all  over  the  province;  the  loss  of  the  child 
was  advertised  and  a  large  reward  offered  for 
his  recovery  and  agents  were  employed  to  look 
for  him.  In  this  search,  which  continued  for 
years,  Mr.  Gilmour  spent  a  large  part  of  his 
fortune,  and  eventually  it  had  to  be  dropped; 
and  of  all  the  family  Mrs.  Gilmour  alone  still 


A  SECOND  STORY  OF  TWO  BROTHERS        39 

believed  that  her  lost  son  was  living,  and  still 
dreamed  and  hoped  that  she  would  see  him 
again  before  her  life  ended. 

One  day  the  Gilmours  entertained  a  traveller, 
a  native  gentleman,  who,  as  the  custom  was  in 
my  time  on  those  great  vacant  plains  where 
houses  were  far  apart,  had  ridden  up  to  the  gate 
at  noon  and  asked  for  hospitality.  He  was  a 
man  of  education,  a  great  traveller  in  the  land, 
and  at  table  entertained  them  with  an  account 
of  some  of  the  strange  out-of-the-world  places 
he  had  visited. 

Presently  one  of  the  sons  of  the  house,  a  tall 
slim  good-looking  young  man  of  about  thirty, 
came  in,  and  saluting  the  stranger  took  his  seat 
at  the  table.  Their  guest  started  and  seemed  to 
be  astonished  at  the  sight  of  him,  and  after  the 
conversation  was  resumed  he  continued  from 
time  to  time  to  look  with  a  puzzled  questioning 
air  at  the  young  man.  Mrs.  Gilmour  had  ob- 
served this  in  him  and,  with  the  thought  of  her 
lost  son  ever  in  her  mind,  she  became  more  and 
more  agitated  until,  unable  longer  to  contain 
her  excitement,  she  burst  out:  "O,  Senor,  why 
do  you  look  at  my  son  in  that  way? — tell  me  if 


40         A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

by  chance  you  have  not  met  someone  in  your 
wanderings  that  was  like  him." 

Yes,  he  replied,  he  had  met  someone  so  like 
the  young  man  before  him  that  it  had  almost 
produced  the  illusion  of  his  being  the  same 
person;  that  was  why  he  had  looked  so  search- 
ingly  at  him. 

Then  in  reply  to  their  eager  questions  he  told 
them  that  it  was  an  old  incident,  that  he  had 
never  spoken  a  word  to  the  young  man  he  had 
seen,  and  that  he  had  only  seen  him  once  for  a 
few  minutes.  The  reason  of  his  remembering 
him  so  well  was  that  he  had  been  struck  by  his 
appearance,  so  strangely  incongruous  in  the  cir- 
cumstances, and  that  had  made  him  look  very 
sharply  at  him.  Over  two  years  had  passed 
since,  but  it  was  still  distinct  in  his  memory.  He 
had  come  to  a  small  frontier  settlement,  a  mili- 
tary outpost,  on  the  extreme  north-eastern 
border  of  the  Republic,  and  had  seen  the  gar- 
rison turn  out  for  exercise  from  the  fort.  It 
was  composed  of  the  class  of  men  one  usually 
saw  in  these  border  forts,  men  of  the  lowest 
type,  miztiros  and  mulattos  most  of  them,  crim- 
inals from  the  gaols  condemned  to  serve  in  the 


A  SECOND  STORY  OF  TWO  BROTHERS        41 

frontier  army  for  their  crimes.  And  in  the 
midst  of  the  low-browed,  swarthy-faced,  ruf- 
fianly crew  appeared  the  tall  distinguished-look- 
ing young  man  with  a  white  skin,  blue  eyes  and 
light  hair — an  amazing  contrast! 

That  was  all  he  could  tell  them,  but  it  was  a 
clue,  the  first  they  had  had  in  thirty  years,  and 
when  they  told  the  story  of  the  lost  child  to  their 
guest  he  was  convinced  that  it  was  their  son  he 
had  seen — there  could  be  no  other  explanation 
of  the  extraordinary  resemblance  between  the 
two  young  men.  At  the  same  time  he  warned 
them  that  the  search  would  be  a  difficult  and 
probably  a  disappointing  one,  as  these  frontier 
garrisons  were  frequently  changed:  also  that 
many  of  the  men  deserted  whenever  they  got 
the  chance,  and  that  many  of  them  got  killed, 
either  in  fight  with  the  Indians,  or  among  them- 
selves over  their  cards,  as  gambling  was  their 
only  recreation. 

But  the  old  hope,  long  dead  in  all  of  them 
except  in  the  mother's  heart,  was  alive  again, 
and  the  son,  whose  appearance  had  so  strongly 
attracted  their  guest's  attention,  at  once  made 
ready  to  go  out  on  that  long  journey.  He  went 


42         A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

by  way  of  Buenos  Ayres  where  he  was  given  a 
passport  by  the  War  Office  and  a  letter  to  the 
Commanding  Officer  to  discharge  the  blue-eyed 
soldier  in  the  event  of  his  being  found  and 
proved  to  be  a  brother  to  the  person  in  quest  of 
him.  But  when  he  got  to  the  end  of  his  journey 
on  the  confines  of  that  vast  country,  after  travel- 
ling many  weeks  on  horseback,  it  was  only  to 
hear  that  the  men  who  had  formed  the  garrison 
two  years  before,  had  been  long  ordered  away 
to  another  province  where  they  had  probably 
been  called  to  aid  in  or  suppress  a  revolutionary 
outbreak,  and  no  certain  news  could  be  had  of 
them.  He  had  to  return  alone  but  not  to  drop 
the  search;  it  was  but  the  first  of  three  great 
attempts  he  made,  and  the  second  was  the  most 
disastrous,  when  in  a  remote  Province  and  a 
lonely  district  he  met  with  a  serious  accident 
which  kept  him  confined  in  some  poor  hovel  for 
many  months,  his  money  all  spent,  and  with  no 
means  of  communicating  with  his  people.  He 
got  back  at  last;  and  after  recruiting  his  health 
and  providing  himself  with  funds,  and  obtain- 
ing fresh  help  from  the  War  Office,  he  set  out  on 
his  third  venture;  and  at  the  end  of  three  years 


A  SECOND  STORY  OF  TWO  BROTHERS        43 

from  the  date  of  his  first  start,  he  succeeded  in 
finding  the  object  of  his  search,  still  serving  as 
a  common  soldier  in  the  army.  That  they  were 
brothers  there  was  no  doubt  in  either  of  their 
minds,  and  together  they  travelled  home. 

And  now  the  old  father  and  mother  had  got 
their  son  back,  and  they  told  him  the  story  of 
the  thirty  years  during  which  they  had  lamented 
his  loss,  and  of  how  at  last  they  had  succeeded 
in  recovering  him: — what  had  he  to  tell  them 
in  return?  It  was  a  disappointing  story.  For, 
to  begin  with,  he  had  no  recollection  of  his  child 
life  at  home — no  faintest  memory  of  mother  or 
father  or  of  the  day  when  the  sudden  violent 
change  came  and  he  was  forcibly  taken  away. 
His  earliest  recollection  was  of  being  taken 
about  by  someone — a  man  who  owned  him,  who 
was  always  at  the  cattle-estates  where  he 
worked,  and  how  this  man  treated  him  kindly 
until  he  was  big  enough  to  be  set  to  work 
shepherding  sheep  and  driving  cattle,  and  doing 
anything  a  boy  could  do  at  any  place  they  lived 
in,  and  that  his  owner  and  master  then  began  to 
be  exacting  and  tyrannical,  and  treated  him  so 
badly  that  he  eventually  ran  away  and  never 


44          A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

saw  the  man  again.  And  from  that  time  onward 
he  lived  much  the  same  kind  of  life  as  when 
with  his  master,  constantly  going  about  from 
place  to  place,  from  province  to  province,  and 
finally  he  had  for  some  unexplained  reason  been 
taken  into  the  army. 

That  was  all — the  story  of  his  thirty  years  of 
wild  horseback  life  told  in  a  few  dry  sentences! 
Could  more  have  been  expected!  The  mother 
had  expected  more  and  would  not  cease  to  ex- 
pect it.  He  was  her  lost  one  found  again,  the 
child  of  her  body  who  in  his  long  absence  had 
gotten  a  second  nature;  but  it  was  nothing  but 
a  colour,  a  garment,  which  would  wear  thinner 
and  thinner,  and  by-and-by  reveal  the  old 
deeper  ineradicable  nature  beneath.  So  she 
imagined,  and  would  take  him  out  to  walk  to 
be  with  him,  to  have  him  all  to  herself,  to  caress 
him,  and  they  would  walk,  she  with  an  arm 
round  his  neck  or  waist;  and  when  she  released 
him  or  whenever  he  could  make  his  escape  from 
the  house,  he  would  go  off  to  the  quarters  of 
the  hired  cattlemen  and  converse  with  them. 
They  were  his  people,  and  he  was  one  of  them 
in  soul  in  spite  of  his  blue  eyes,  and  like  one  of 


A  SECOND  STORY  OF  TWO  BROTHERS       45 

them  he  could  lasso  or  break  a  horse  and  throw 
a  bull  and  put  a  brand  on  him,  and  kill  a  cow 
and  skin  it,  or  roast  it  in  its  hide  if  it  was  wanted 
so;  and  he  could  do  a  hundred  other  things, 
though  he  couldn't  read  a  book,  and  I  daresay 
he  found  it  a  very  misery  to  sit  on  a  chair  in  the 
company  of  those  who  read  in  books  and  spoke 
a  language  that  was  strange  to  him — the  tongue 
he  had  himself  spoken  as  a  child! 


VII 

A  THIRD  STORY  OF  TWO 
BROTHERS 

STORIES  of  two  brothers  are  common 
enough  the  world  over — probably  more  so 
than  stories  of  young  men  who  have  fallen  in 
love  with  their  grandmothers,  and  the  main  fea- 
ture in  most  of  them,  as  in  the  story  I  have  just 
told,  is  in  the  close  resemblance  of  the  two 
brothers,  for  on  that  everything  hinges.  It  is 
precisely  the  same  in  the  one  I  am  about  to  re- 
late, one  I  came  upon  a  few  years  ago — just  how 
many  I  wish  not  to  say,  nor  just  where  it  hap- 
pened except  that  it  was  in  the  west  country; 
and  for  the  real  names  of  people  and  places  I 
have  substituted  fictitious  ones.  For  this  too, 
like  the  last,  is  a  true  story.  The  reader  on  fin- 
ishing it  will  perhaps  blush  to  think  it  true,  but 
apart  from  the  moral  aspect  of  the  case  it  is, 
psychologically,  a  singularly  interesting  one. 

46 


A  THIRD  STORY  OF  TWO  BROTHERS        47 

One  summer  day  I  travelled  by  a  public  con- 
veyance to  Pollhampton,  a  small  rustic  market 
town  several  miles  distant  from  the  nearest  rail- 
road. My  destination  was  not  the  town  itself, 
but  a  lonely  heath-grown  hill  five  miles  further 
on,  where  I  wished  to  find  something  that  grew 
and  blossomed  on  it,  and  my  first  object  on  ar- 
rival was  to  secure  a  riding  horse  or  horse  and 
trap  to  carry  me  there.  I  was  told  at  once  that 
it  was  useless  to  look  for  such  a  thing,  as  it  was 
market  day  and  everybody  was  fully  occupied. 
That  it  was  market  day  I  already  knew  very 
well,  as  the  two  or  three  main  streets  and  wide 
market-place  in  the  middle  of  the  town  were 
full  of  sheep  and  cows  and  pigs  and  people  run- 
ning about  and  much  noise  of  shoutings  and 
barking  dogs.  However,  the  strange  object  of 
the  strange-looking  stranger  in  coming  to  the 
town,  interested  some  of  the  wild  native  boys, 
and  they  rushed  about  to  tell  it,  and  in  less  than 
five  minutes  a  nice  neat-looking  middle-aged 
man  stood  at  my  elbow  and  said  he  had  a  good 
horse  and  trap  and  for  seven-and-sixpence 
would  drive  me  to  the  hill,  help  me  there  to 
find  what  I  wanted,  and  bring  me  back  in  time 


48         A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

to  catch  the  conveyance.  Accordingly  in  a  few 
minutes  we  were  speeding  out  of  the  town  drawn 
by  a  fast-trotting  horse.  Fast  trotters  appeared 
to  be  common  in  these  parts,  and  as  we  went 
along  the  road  from  time  to  time  a  small  cloud 
of  dust  would  become  visible  far  ahead  of  us, 
and  in  two  or  three  minutes  a  farmer's  trap 
would  appear  and  rush  past  on  its  way  to 
market,  to  vanish  behind  us  in  two  or  three  min- 
utes more  and  be  succeeded  by  another  and  then 
others.  By-and-by  one  came  past  driven  by  two 
young  women,  one  holding  the  reins,  the  other 
playing  with  the  whip.  They  were  tall,  dark, 
with  black  hair,  and  colourless  faces,  aged  about 
thirty,  I  imagined.  As  they  flew  by  I  re- 
marked, "I  would  lay  a  sovereign  to  a  shilling 
that  they  are  twins."  "You'd  lose  your  money — 
there's  two  or  three  years  between  them,"  said 
my  driver.  "Do  you  know  them — you  didn't 
nod  to  them  nor  they  to  you?"  I  said.  "I  know 
them,"  he  returned,  "as  well  as  I  know  my  own 
face  when  I  look  at  myself  in  a  glass."  On 
which  I  remarked  that  it  was  very  wonderful. 
"  'Tis  only  a  part  of  the  wonder,  and  not  the 
biggest  part,"  he  said.  "You've  seen  what  they 


A  THIRD  STORY  OF  TWO  BROTHERS        49 

are  like  and  how  like  they  are,  but  if  you  passed 
a  day  with  them  in  the  house  you'd  be  able  to 
tell  one  from  the  other;  but  if  you  lived  a  year 
in  the  same  house  with  their  two  brothers  you'd 
never  be  able  to  tell  one  from  the  other  and  be 
sure  you  were  right.  The  strangest  thing  is  that 
the  brothers  who,  like  their  sisters,  have  two  or 
three  years  between  them,  are  not  a  bit  like 
their  sisters;  they  are  blue-eyed  and  seem  a  dif- 
ferent race." 

That,  I  said,  made  it  more  wonderful  still.  A 
curiously  symmetrical  family.  Rather  awk- 
ward for  their  neighbours,  and  people  who  had 
business  relations  with  them. 

"Yes — perhaps,"  he  said,  "but  it  served  them 
very  well  on  one  occasion  to  be  so  much 
alike." 

I  began  to  smell  a  dramatic  rat  and  begged 
him  to  tell  me  all  about  it. 

He  said  he  didn't  mind  telling  me.  Their 
name  was  Prage — Antony  and  Martin  Prage, 
of  Red  Pit  Farm,  which  they  inherited  from 
their  father  and  worked  together.  They  were 
very  united.  One  day  one  of  them,  when  riding 
about  six  miles  from  home,  met  a  girl  coming 


50         A  TRAVELLER  IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

along  the  road,  and  stopped  his  horse  to  talk  to 
her.  She  was  a  poor  girl  that  worked  at  a  dairy 
farm  near  by,  and  lived  with  her  mother,  a  poor 
old  widow-woman,  in  a  cottage  in  the  village. 
She  was  pretty,  and  the  young  man  took  a  liking 
to  her  and  he  persuaded  her  to  come  again  to 
meet  him  on  another  day  at  that  spot;  and  there 
were  many  more  meetings,  and  they  were  fond 
of  each  other;  but  after  she  told  him  that  some- 
thing had  happened  to  her  he  never  came  again. 
When  she  made  enquiries  she  found  he  had 
given  her  a  false  name  and  address,  and  so  she 
lost  sight  of  him.  Then  her  child  was  born, 
and  she  lived  with  her  mother.  And  you  must 
know  what  her  life  was — she  and  her  old  mother 
and  her  baby  and  nothing  to  keep  them.  And 
though  she  was  a  shy  ignorant  girl  she  made  up 
her  mind  to  look  for  him  until  she  found  him 
to  make  him  pay  for  the  child.  She  said  he  had 
come  on  his  horse  so  often  to  see  her  that  he 
could  not  be  too  far  away,  and  every  morning 
she  would  go  off  in  search  of  him,  and  she  spent 
weeks  and  months  tramping  about  the  country, 
visiting  all  the  villages  for  many  miles  round 
looking  for  him.  And  one  day  in  a  small  vil- 


Si 

lage  six  miles  from  her  home  she  caught  sight 
of  him  galloping  by  on  his  horse,  and  seeing  a 
woman  standing  outside  a  cottage  she  ran  to  her 
and  asked  who  that  young  man  was  who  had 
just  ridden  by.  The  woman  told  her  she 
thought  it  was  Mr.  Antony  Prage  of  Red  Pit 
Farm,  about  two  miles  from  the  village.  Then 
the  girl  came  home  and  was  advised  what  to 
do.  She  had  to  do  it  all  herself  as  there  was  no 
money  to  buy  a  lawyer,  so  she  had  him  brought 
to  court  and  told  her  own  story,  and  the  judge 
was  very  gentle  with  her  and  drew  out  all  the 
particulars.  But  Mr.  Prage  had  got  a  lawyer, 
and  when  the  girl  had  finished  her  story  he  got 
up  and  put  just  one  question  to  her.  First  he 
called  on  Antony  Prage  to  stand  up  in  court, 
then  he  said  to  her,  "Do  you  swear  that  the 
man  standing  before  you  is  the  father  of  your 
child? 

And  just  when  he  put  that  question  Antony's 
brother  Martin,  who  had  been  sitting  at  the 
back  of  the  court,  got  up,  and  coming  forward 
stood  at  his  brother's  side.  The  girl  stared  at 
the  two,  standing  together,  too  astonished  to 
speak  for  some  time.  She  looked  from  one  to 


52         A  TRAVELLER  IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

the  other  and  at  last  said,  "I  swear  it  is  one  of 
them."  That,  the  lawyer  said,  wasn't  good 
enough.  If  she  could  not  swear  that  Antony 
Prage,  the  man  she  had  brought  into  court,  was 
the  guilty  person,  then  the  case  'fell  to  the 
ground. 

My  informant  finished  his  story  and  I  asked 
"Was  that  then  the  end — was  nothing  more 
done  about  it?" 

"No,  nothing." 

"Did  not  the  judge  say  it  was  a  mean  dirty 
trick  arranged  between  the  brothers  and  the 
lawyer?" 

"No,  he  didn't — he  non-suited  her  and  that 
was  all." 

"And  did  not  Antony  Prage,  or  both  of 
them,  go  into  the  witness  box  and  swear  that 
they  were  innocent  of  the  charge?" 

"No,  they  never  opened  their  mouths  in 
court.  When  the  judge  told  the  young  woman 
that  she  had  failed  to  establish  her  case,  they 
walked  out  smiling,  and  their  friends  came 
round  them  and  they  went  off  together." 

"And  these  brothers,  I  suppose,  still  live 
among  you  at  their  farm  and  are  regarded  as 


A  THIRD  STORY  OF  TWO  BROTHERS        53 

good  respectable  young  men,  and  go  to  chapel 
on  Sundays,  and  by-and-by  will  probably  marry 
nice  respectable  Methodist  girls,  and  the  girls' 
friends  will  congratulate  them  on  making  such 
good  matches." 

"Oh,  no  doubt;  one  has  been  married  some 
time  and  his  wife  has  got  a  baby;  the  other  one 
will  be  married  before  long." 

"And  what  do  you  think  about  it  all?" 

"I've  told  you  what  happened  because  the 
facts  came  out  in  court  and  are  known  to  every- 
one. What  I  think  about  it  is  what  I  think,  and 
I've  no  call  to  tell  that." 

"Oh,  very  well!"  I  said,  vexed  at  his  non- 
committal attitude.  Then  I  looked  at  him,  but 
his  face  revealed  nothing;  he  was  just  the  man 
with  a  quiet  manner  and  low  voice  who  had 
put  himself  at  my  service  and  engaged  to  drive 
me  five  miles  out  to  a  hill,  help  me  to  find  what 
I  wanted  and  bring  me  back  in  time  to  catch  the 
conveyance  to  my  town,  all  for  the  surprisingly 
moderate  sum  of  seven-and-sixpence.  But  he 
had  told  me  the  story  of  the  two  brothers;  and 
besides,  in  spite  of  our  faces  being  masks,  if  one 
make  them  so,  mind  converses  with  mind  in 


54         A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

some  way  the  psychologists  have  not  yet  found 
out,  and  I  knew  that  in  his  heart  of  hearts  he 
regarded  those  two  respectable  members  of  the 
Pollhampton  community  much  as  I  did. 


VIII 

THE  TWO  WHITE  HOUSES:  A 
MEMORY 

'"T^HERE'S  no  connection — not  the  slightest 
-•-  —between  this  two  and  the  other  twos;  it 
was  nevertheless  the  telling  of  the  stories  of  the 
brothers  which  brought  back  to  me  this  ancient 
memory  of  two  houses.  '  Nor  were  the  two 
houses  connected  in  any  way,  except  that  they 
were  both  white,  situated  on  the  same  road,  on 
the  same  side  of  it;  also  both  stood  a  little  way 
back  from  the  road  in  grounds  beautifully 
shaded  with  old  trees.  It  was  the  great  south- 
ern road  which  leads  from  the  city  of  Buenos 
Ayres,  the  Argentine  capital,  to  the  vast  level 
cattle-country  of  the  pampas,  where  I  was  born 
and  bred.  Naturally  it  was  a  tremendously  ex- 
citing adventure  to  a  child's  mind  to  come  from 
these  immense  open  plains,  where  one  lived  in 
rude  surroundings  with  the  semi-barbarous 
gauchos  for  only  neighbours,  to  a  great  civilised 

55 


56          A   TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

town  full  of  people  and  of  things  strange  and 
beautiful  to  see.  And  to  touch  and  taste. 

Thus  it  happened  that  when  I,  a  child,  with 
my  brothers  and  sisters,  were  taken  to  visit  the 
town  we  would  become  more  and  more  excited 
as  we  approached  it  at  the  end  of  a  long  journey, 
which  usually  took  us  two  days,  at  all  we  saw 
—ox-carts  and  carriages  and  men  on  horseback 
on  the  wide  hot  dusty  road,  and  the  houses  and 
groves  and  gardens  on  either  side.  ...  It  was 
thus  that  we  became  acquainted  with  the  two 
white  houses,  and  were  attracted  to  them  be- 
cause in  their  whiteness  and  green  shade  they 
looked  beautiful  to  us  and  cool  and  restful,  and 
we  wished  we  could  live  in  them. 

They  were  well  outside  of  the  town,  the 
nearest  being  about  two  miles  from  its  old  south 
wall  and  fortifications,  the  other  one  a  little  over 
two  miles  further  out.  The  last  being  the  farth- 
est out  was  the  first  one  we  came  to  on  our  jour- 
neys to  the  city;  it  was  a  somewhat  singular- 
looking  building  with  a  verandah  supported  by 
pillars  painted  green,  and  it  had  a  high  turret. 
And  near  it  was  a  large  dovecot  with  a  cloud 
of  pigeons  usually  flying  about  it,  and  we  came 


TWO  WHITE  HOUSES:    A  MEMORY  57 

to  calling  it  Dovecot  House.  The  second  house 
was  plainer  in  form  but  was  not  without  a  pe- 
culiar distinction  in  its  large  wrought-iron  front 
gate  with  white  pillars  on  each  side,  and  in  front 
of  each  pillar  a  large  cannon  planted  postwise 
in  the  earth. 

This  we  called  Cannon  House,  but  who  lived 
in  these  two  houses  none  could  tell  us. 

When  I  was  old  enough  to  ride  as  well  as 
any  grown-up,  and  my  occasional  visits  to  town 
were  made  on  horseback,  I  once  had  three  young 
men  for  my  companions,  the  oldest  about 
twenty-eight,  the  two  not  more  than  nineteen 
and  twenty-one  respectively.  I  was  eagerly 
looking  out  for  the  first  white  house,  and  when 
we  were  coming  to  it  I  cried  out,  "Now  we  are 
coming  to  Dovecot  House,  let's  go  slow  and 
look  at  it." 

Without  a  word  they  all  pulled  up,  and  for 
some  minutes  we  sat  silently  gazing  at  the 
house.  Then  the  eldest  of  the  three  said  that 
if  he  was  a  rich  man  he  would  buy  the  house 
and  pass  the  rest  of  his  life  very  happily  in  it 
and  in  the  shade  of  its  old  trees. 

In  what,  the  others  asked,  would  his  happi- 


58          A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

ness  consist,  since  a  rational  being  must  have 
something  besides  a  mere  shelter  from  the 
storm  and  a  tree  to  shade  him  from  the  sun  to 
be  happy? 

He  answered  that  after  securing  the  house 
he  would  range  the  whole  country  in  search  of 
the  most  beautiful  woman  in  it,  and  that  when 
he  had  found  and  made  her  his  wife  he  would 
spend  his  days  and  years  in  adoring  her  for  her 
beauty  and  charm. 

His  two  young  companions  laughed  scorn- 
fully. Then  one  of  them — the  younger — said 
that  he  too  if  wealthy  would  buy  the  house,  as 
he  had  not  seen  another  so  well  suited  for  the 
life  he  would  like  to  live.  A  life  spent  with 
books!  He  would  send  to  Europe  for  all  the 
books  he  desired  to  read  and  would  fill  the 
house  with  them;  and  he  would  spend  his  days 
in  the  house  or  in  the  shade  of  the  trees,  reading 
every  day  from  morning  to  night  undisturbed 
by  traffic  and  politics  and  revolutions  in  the 
land,  and  by  happenings  all  the  world  over. 

He  too  was  well  laughed  at;  then  the  last 
of  the  three  said  he  didn't  care  for  either  of 
their  ideals.  He  liked  wine  best,  and  if  he  had 


TWO  WHITE  HOUSES:    A  MEMORY          59 

great  wealth  he  would  buy  the  house  and  send  to 
Europe — O  not  for  books  nor  for  a  beautiful 
wife!  but  for  wine — wines  of  all  the  choicest 
kinds  in  bottle  and  casks — and  fill  the  cellars 
with  it.  And  his  choice  wines  would  bring 
choice  spirits  to  help  him  drink  them;  and  then 
in  the  shade  of  the  old  trees  they  would  have 
their  table  and  sit  over  their  wine — the  merri- 
est, wittiest,  wisest,  most  eloquent  gathering  in 
all  the  land. 

The  others  in  their  turn  laughed  at  him,  de- 
spising his  ideal,  and  then  we  set  off  once  more. 

They  had  not  thought  to  put  the  question  to 
me,  because  I  was  only  a  boy  while  they  were 
grown  men;  but  I  had  listened  with  such  intense 
interest  to  that  colloquy  that  when  I  recall  the 
scene  now  I  can  see  the  very  expressions  of  their 
sun-burnt  faces  and  listen  to  the  very  sound  of 
their  speech  and  laughter.  For  they  were  all 
intimately  known  to  me  and  I  knew  they  were 
telling  openly  just  what  their  several  notions  of 
a  happy  life  were,  caring  nothing  for  the  laugh- 
ter of  the  others.  I  was  mightily  pleased  that 
they,  too,  had  felt  the  attractions  of  my  Dovecot 
House  as  a  place  where  a  man,  whatsoever  his 


60         A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

individual  taste,  might  find  a  happy  abiding- 
place. 

Time  rolled  on,  as  the  slow-going  old  story- 
books written  before  we  were  born  used  to  say, 
and  I  still  preserved  the  old  habit  of  pulling  up 
my  horse  on  coming  abreast  of  each  one  of  the 
two  houses  on  every  journey  to  and  from  town. 
Then  one  afternoon  when  walking  my  horse 
past  the  Cannon  House  I  saw  an  old  man 
dressed  in  black  with  snow-white  hair  and  side- 
whiskers  in  the  old,  old  style,  and  an  ashen  grey 
face,  standing  motionless  by  the  side  of  one  of 
the  guns  and  gazing  out  at  the  distance.  His 
eyes  were  blue — the  dim  weary  blue  of  a  tired 
old  man's  eyes,  and  he  appeared  not  to  see  me 
as  I  walked  slowly  by  him  within  a  few  yards, 
but  to  be  gazing  at  something  beyond,  very  far 
away.  I  took  him  to  be  a  resident,  perhaps  the 
owner  of  the  house,  and  this  was  the  first  time 
I  had  seen  any  person  there.  So  strongly  did 
the  sight  of  that  old  man  impress  me  that  I 
could  not  get  his  image  out  of  my  mind,  and  I 
spoke  to  those  I  knew  in  the  city,  and  before 
long  I  met  with  one  who  was  able  to  satisfy  my 
curiosity  about  him.  The  old  man  I  had  seen, 


TWO  WHITE  HOUSES:    A  MEMORY          61 

he  told  me,  was  Admiral  Brown,  an  English- 
man who  many  years  before  had  taken  service 
with  the  Dictator  Rosas  at  the  time  when  Rosas 
was  at  war  with  the  neighbouring  Republic  of 
Uruguay,  and  had  laid  siege  to  the  city  of 
Montevideo.  Garibaldi,  who  was  spending  the 
years  of  his  exile  from  Italy  in  South  America, 
righting  as  usual  wherever  there  was  any  fight- 
ing to  be  had,  flew  to  the  help  of  Uruguay,  and 
having  acquired  great  fame  as  a  sea-fighter  was 
placed  in  command  of  the  naval  forces,  such  as 
they  were,  of  the  little  Republic.  But  Brown 
was  a  better  fighter,  and  he  soon  captured  and 
destroyed  his  enemies'  ships,  Garibaldi  himself 
escaping  shortly  afterwards  to  come  back  to  the 
old  world  to  renew  the  old  fight  against  Austria. 

When  old  Admiral  Brown  retired  he  built 
this  house,  or  had  it  given  to  him  by  Rosas  who, 
I  was  told,  had  a  great  affection  for  him,  and 
he  then  had  the  two  cannons  he  had  taken  from 
one  of  the  captured  ships  planted  at  his  front 
gate. 

Shortly  after  that  one  glimpse  I  had  had  of 
the  old  Admiral,  he  died.  And  I  think  that 
when  I  saw  him  standing  at  his  gate  gazing  past 


62          A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

me  at  the  distance,  he  was  looking  out  for  an 
expected  messenger — a  figure  in  black  moving 
swiftly  towards  him  with  a  drawn  sword  in  his 
hand. 

Oddly  enough  it  was  but  a  short  time  after 
seeing  the  old  man  at  his  gate  that  I  had  my  first 
sight  of  an  inmate  of  Dovecot  House.  While 
slowly  riding  by  it  I  saw  a  lady  come  out  from 
the  front  door — young,  good-looking,  very  pale 
and  dressed  in  the  deepest  mourning.  She  had 
a  bowl  in  her  hand,  and  going  a  little  distance 
from  the  house  she  called  the  pigeons  and  down 
they  flew  in  a  crowd  to  her  feet  to  be  fed. 

A  few  months  later  when  passing  I  saw  this 
same  lady  once  more,  and  on  this  occasion  she 
was  coming  to  the  gate  as  I  rode  by,  and  I  saw 
her  closely,  for  she  turned  and  looked  at  me, 
not  unseeingly  like  the  old  man,  and  her  face 
was  perfectly  colourless  and  her  large  dark  eyes 
the  most  sorrowful  I  had  ever  seen. 

That  was  my  last  sight  of  her,  nor  did  I  see 
any  human  creature  about  the  house  after  that 
for  about  two  years.  Then  one  hot  summer  day 
I  caught  sight  of  three  persons  who  looked  like 
servants  or  caretakers,  sitting  in  the  shade  some 


TWO  WHITE  HOUSES:    A  MEMORY          63 

distance  from  the  house  and  drinking  mate,  the 
tea  of  the  country. 

Here,  thought  I,  is  an  opportunity  not  to  be 
lost — one  long  waited  for!  Leaving  my  horse 
at  the  gate  I  went  to  them,  and  addressing  a 
large  woman,  the  most  important-looking  per- 
son of  the  three,  as  politely  as  I  could,  I  said  I 
was  not,  as  they  perhaps  imagined,  a  long  absent 
friend  or  relation  returned  from  the  wars,  but  a 
perfect  stranger,  a  traveller  on  the  great  south 
road;  that  I  was  hot  and  thirsty,  and  the  sight 
of  them  refreshing  themselves  in  that  pleasant 
shade  had  tempted  me  to  intrude  myself  upon 
them. 

She  received  me  with  smiles  and  a  torrent  of 
welcoming  words,  and  the  expectetd  invitation 
to  sit  down  and  drink  mate  with  them.  She 
was  a  very  large  woman,  very  fat  and  very  dark, 
of  that  reddish  or  mahogany  colour  which, 
taken  with  the  black  eyes  and  coarse  black  hair, 
is  commonly  seen  in  persons  of  mixed  blood — 
Iberian  with  aboriginal.  I  took  her  age  to  be 
about  fifty  years.  And  she  was  as  voluble  as  she 
was  fat  and  dark,  and  poured  out  such  a  stream 
of  talk  on  or  rather  over  me  like  warm  greasy 


64          A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

water,  and  so  forcing  me  to  keep  my  eyes  on  her, 
that  it  was  almost  impossible  to  give  any  atten- 
tion to  the  other  two.  One  was  her  husband, 
Spanish  and  dark  too,  but  with  a  different  sort 
of  darkness;  a  skeleton  of  a  man  with  a  bony 
ghastly  face,  in  old  frayed  workman's  clothes 
and  dust-covered  boots;  his  hands  very  grimy. 
And  the  third  person  was  their  daughter,  as 
they  called  her,  a  girl  of  fifteen  with  a  clear 
white  and  pink  skin,  regular  features,  beautiful 
grey  eyes  and  light  brown  hair.  A  perfect  type 
of  a  nice  looking  English  girl  such  as  one  finds 
in  any  village,  in  almost  any  cottage,  in  the 
Midlands  or  anywhere  else  in  this  island. 

These  two  were  silent,  but  at  length,  in  one 
of  the  fat  woman's  brief  pauses,  the  girl  spoke, 
in  a  Spanish  in  which  one  could  detect  no  trace 
of  a  foreign  accent,  in  a  low  and  pleasing  voice, 
only  to  say  something  about  the  garden.  She 
was  strangely  earnest  and  appeared  anxious  to 
impress  on  them  that  it  was  necessary  to  have 
certain  beds  of  vegetables  they  cultivated 
watered  that  very  day  lest  they  should  be  lost 
owing  to  the  heat  and  dryness.  The  man 
grunted  and  the  woman  said  yes,  yes,  yes,  a 


TWO  WHITE  HOUSES:    A  MEMORY          65 

dozen  times.  Then  the  girl  left  us,  going  back 
to  her  garden,  and  the  fat  woman  went  on  talk- 
ing to  me.  I  tried  once  or  twice  to  get  her  to 
tell  me  about  her  daughter,  as  she  called  her, 
but  she  would  not  respond — she  would  at  once 
go  off  into  other  subjects.  Then  I  tried  some- 
thing else  and  told  her  of  my  sight  of  a  hand- 
some youug  lady  in  mourning  I  had  once  seen 
there  feeding  the  pigeons.  And  now  she  re- 
sponded readily  enough  and  told  me  the  whole 
story  of  the  lady. 

She  belonged  to  a  good  and  very  wealthy 
family  of  the  city  and  was  an  only  child,  and 
lost  both  parents  when  very  young.  She  was  a 
very  pretty  girl  of  a  joyous  nature  and  a  great  fa- 
vourite in  society.  At  the  age  of  sixteen  she  be- 
came engaged  to  a  young  man  who  was  also  of 
a  good  and  wealthy  family.  After  becoming 
engaged  to  her  he  went  to  the  war  in  Paraguay, 
and  after  an  absence  of  two  years,  during  which 
he  had  distinguished  himself  in  the  field  and 
won  his  captaincy,  he  returned  to  marry  her. 
She  was  at  her  own  house  waiting  in  joyful  ex- 
citement to  receive  him  when  his  carriage 
arrived,  and  she  flew  to  the  door  to  welcome 


66          A  TRAVELLER   IN   LITTLE   THINGS 

him.  He,  seeing  her,  jumped  out  and  came 
running  to  her  with  his  arms  out  to  embrace  her, 
but  when  still  three  or  four  yards  distant  sud- 
denly stopped  short  and  throwing  up  his  arms 
fell  to  the  earth  a  dead  man.  The  shock  of  his 
death  at  this  moment  of  supreme  bliss  for  both 
of  them  was  more  than  she  could  bear;  it 
brought  on  a  fever  of  the  brain  and  it  was 
feared  that  if  she  ever  recovered  it  would  be 
with  a  shattered  mind.  But  it  was  not  so :  she 
got  well  and  her  reason  was  not  lost,  but  she  was 
changed  into  a  different  being  from  the  happy 
girl  of  other  days — fond  of  society,  of  dress,  of 
pleasures;  full  of  life  and  laughter.  "Now  she 
is  sadness  itself  and  will  continue  to  wear 
mourning  for  the  rest  of  her  life,  and  prefers 
always  to  be  alone.  This  old  house,  built  by  her 
grandfather  when  there  were  few  houses  in  this 
suburb,  she  once  liked  to  visit,  but  since  her  loss 
she  has  been  but  once  in  it.  That  was  when  you 
saw  her,  when  she  came  to  spend  a  few  months 
in  solitude.  She  would  not  even  allow  me  to 
come  and  sit  and  talk  to  her!  Think  of  that! 
She  thinks  nothing  of  her  possessions  and  allows 
us  to  live  here  rent  free,  to  grow  vegetables  and 


TWO  WHITE  HOUSES:    A  MEMORY          67 

raise  poultry  for  the  market.  That  is  what  we 
do  for  a  living;  my  husband  and  our  little 
daughter  attend  to  these  things  out  of  doors,  and 
I  look  after  the  house." 

When  she  got  to  the  end  of  this  long  relation 
I  rose  and  thanked  her  for  her  hospitality  and 
made  my  escape.  But  the  mystery  of  the  white, 
gentle-voiced,  grey-eyed  girl  haunted  me,  and 
from  that  time  I  made  it  my  custom  to  call  at 
Dovecot  House  on  every  journey  to  town,  al- 
ways to  be  received  with  open  arms,  so  to  speak, 
by  the  great  fat  woman.  But  she  always  baffled 
me.  The  girl  was  usually  to  be  seen,  always  the 
same,  quiet,  unsmiling,  silent,  or  else  speaking 
in  Spanish  in  that  gentle  un-Spanish  voice  of 
some  practical  matter  about  the  garden,  the 
poultry,  and  so  on.  I  was  not  in  love  with  her, 
but  extremely  curious  to  know  who  she  really 
was  and  how  she  came  to  be  a  "daughter,"  or 
in  the  hands  of  these  unlikely  people.  For  it 
was  really  one  of  the  strangest  things  I  had  ever 
come  across  up  to  that  early  period  of  my  life. 
Since  then  I  have  met  with  even  more  curious 
things;  but  being  then  of  an  age  when  strange 
things  have  a  great  fascination  I  was  bent  on 


68         A  TRAVELLER  IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

getting  to  the  bottom  of  the  mystery.  However, 
it  was  in  vain;  doubtless  the  fat  woman  sus- 
pected my  motives  in  calling  on  her  and  sipping 
mate  and  listening  to  her  talk,  for  whenever  I 
mentioned  her  daughter  in  a  tentative  way,  hop- 
ing it  would  lead  to  talk  on  that  subject,  she 
quickly  and  skilfully  changed  it  for  some  other 
subject.  And  at  last  seeing  that  I  was  wasting 
my  time,  I  dropped  calling,  but  to  this  day  I  am 
rather  sorry  I  allowed  myself  to  be  defeated. 

And  now  once  more  I  must  return  for  the 
space  of  two  or  three  pages  to  the  brother  white 
house  before  saying  good-bye  to  both. 

For  it  had  come  to  pass  that  while  my  investi- 
gations into  the  mystery  of  Dovecot  House  were 
in  progress  I  had  by  chance  got  my  foot  in  Can- 
non House.  And  this  is  how  it  happened. 
When  the  old  Admiral  whose  ghostly  image 
haunted  me  had  received  his  message  and  van- 
ished from  this  scene,  the  house  was  sold  and 
was  bought  by  an  Englishman,  an  old  resident 
in  the  town,  who  for  thirty  years  had  been  toil- 
ing and  moiling  in  a  business  of  some  kind  until 
he  had  built  a  small  fortune.  It  then  occurred 
to  him,  or  more  likely  his  wife  and  daughters 


TWO  WHITE  HOUSES:    A  MEMORY          69 

suggested  it,  that  it  was  time  to  get  a  little  way 
out  of  the  hurly-burly,  and  they  accordingly 
came  to  live  at  the  house.  There  were  two 
daughters,  tall,  slim,  graceful  girls,  one,  the 
elder,  dark  and  pale  like  her  old  Cornish  father, 
with  black  hair;  the  other  a  blonde  with  a  rose 
colour  and  of  a  lively  merry  disposition.  These 
girls  happened  to  be  friends  of  my  sisters,  and 
so  it  fell  out  that  I  too  became  an  occasional 
visitor  to  Cannon  House. 

Then  a  strange  thing  happened,  which  made 
it  a  sad  and  anxious  home  to  the  inmates  for 
many  long  months,  running  to  nigh  on  two 
years.  They  were  fond  of  riding,  and  one  after- 
noon when  there  was  no  visitor  or  any  person 
to  accompany  them,  the  youngest  girl  said  she 
would  have  her  ride  and  ordered  her  horse  to 
be  brought  from  the  paddock  and  saddled.  Her 
elder  sister,  who  was  of  a  somewhat  timid  dis- 
position, tried  to  dissuade  her  from  riding  out 
alone  on  the  highway.  She  replied  that  she 
would  just  have  one  little  gallop — a  mile  or  so 
— and  then  come  back.  Her  sister,  still  anxious, 
followed  her  out  of  the  gate  and  said  she  would 
wait  there  for  her  return. 


70         A   TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

Half  a  mile  or  so  from  the  gate  the  horse,  a 
high-spirited  animal,  took  fright  at  something 
and  bolted  with  its  rider.  The  sister  waiting 
and  looking  out  saw  them  coming,  the  horse  at 
a  furious  pace,  the  rider  clinging  for  dear  life 
to  the  pummel  of  the  saddle.  It  flashed  on  her 
mind  that  unless  the  horse  could  be  stopped 
before  he  came  crashing  through  the  gate  her 
sister  would  be  killed,  and  running  out  to  a  dis- 
tance of  thirty  yards  from  the  gate  she  jumped 
at  the  horse's  head  as  it  came  rushing  by  and 
succeeded  in  grasping  the  reins,  and  holding 
fast  to  them  she  was  dragged  to  within  two  or 
three  yards  of  the  gate,  when  the  horse  was 
brought  to  a  standstill,  whereupon  her  grasp  re- 
laxed and  she  fell  to  the  ground  in  a  dead  faint. 

She  had  done  a  marvellous  thing — almost  in- 
credible. I  have  had  horses  bolt  with  me  and 
have  seen  horses  bolt  with  others  many  times; 
and  every  person  who  has  seen  such  a  thing  and 
who  knows  a  horse — its  power  and  the  blind 
mad  terror  it  is  seized  with  on  occasions — will 
agree  with  me  that  it  is  only  at  the  risk  of  his 
life  that  even  a  strong  and  agile  man  can  attempt 
to  stop  a  bolting  horse. 


TWO  WHITE  HOUSES:    A  MEMORY          71 

We  all  said  that  she  had  saved  her  sister's  life 
and  were  lost  in  admiration  of  her  deed,  but 
presently  it  seemed  that  she  would  pay  for  it 
with  her  own  life.  She  recovered  from  the 
faint,  but  from  that  day  began  a  decline,  until 
in  about  three  months'  time  she  appeared  to  me 
more  like  a  ghost  than  a  being  of  flesh  and 
blood.  She  had  not  strength  to  cross  the  rooms 
— all  her  strength  and  life  were  dying  out  of 
her  because  of  that  one  unnatural,  almost  super- 
natural, act.  She  passed  the  days  lying  on  a 
couch,  speaking,  when  obliged  to  speak,  in  a 
whisper,  her  eyes  sunk,  her  face  white  even  to 
the  lips,  seeming  the  whiter  for  the  mass  of  loose 
raven-black  hair  in  which  it  was  set.  There 
were  few  doctors,  English  and  native,  who  were 
not  first  and  last  called  into  consultation  over 
the  case,  and  still  no  benefit,  no  return  to  life, 
but  ever  the  slow  drifting  towards  the  end. 
And  at  the  last  consultation  of  all  this  happened. 
When  it  was  over  and  the  doctors  were  asked 
into  a  room  where  refreshments  were  placed 
for  them,  the  father  of  the  girl  spoke  aside  to 
a  young  doctor,  a  stranger  to  him,  and  begged 
him  to  tell  him  truly  if  there  was  no  hope.  The 


72          A   TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

other  replied  that  he  should  not  lose  all  hope  if 
— then  he  paused,  and  when  he  spoke  again  it 
was  to  say,  "I  am,  you  see,  a  very  young  man,  a 
beginner  in  the  profession,  with  little  experi- 
ence, and  hardly  know  why  I  am  called  here  to 
consult  with  these  older  and  wiser  men;  and 
naturally  my  small  voice  received  but  little  at- 
tention." 

By-and-by,  when  they  had  all  gone  except  the 
family  doctor,  he  informed  the  distracted  pa- 
rents that  it  was  impossible  to  save  their  daugh- 
ter's life.  The  father  cried  out  that  he  would 
not  lose  all  hope  and  would  call  in  another  man, 
whereupon  old  Dr.  Wormwood  seized  his  brass- 
headed  cane  and  took  himself  off  in  a  huff.  The 
young  stranger  was  then  called  in.  The  patient 
had  been  given  arsenic  with  other  drugs;  he 
gave  her  arsenic  only,  increasing  the  doses  enor- 
mously, until  she  was  given  as  much  in  a  day 
or  two  as  would  have  killed  a  healthy  person; 
with  milk  for  only  nourishment.  As  a  result, 
in  a  week  or  so  the  decline  was  stayed,  and  in 
that  condition,  very  near  to  dissolution,  she  con- 
tinued some  weeks,  and  then  slowly,  imper- 
ceptibly, began  to  mend.  But  so  slow  was  the 


TWO  WHITE  HOUSES:  A  MEMORY          73 

improvement  that  it  went  on  for  months  before 
she  was  well.  It  was  a  complete  recovery;  she 
had  got  back  all  her  old  strength  and  joy  in  life, 
and  went  again  for  a  ride  every  day  with  her 
sister. 

Not  very  long  afterwards  both  sisters  were 
married,  and  my  visits  to  Cannon  House  ceased 
automatically. 

Now  the  two  White  Houses  are  but  a  mem- 
ory, revived  for  a  brief  period  to  vanish  quickly 
again  into  oblivion,  a  something  seen  long  ago 
and  far  away  in  another  hemisphere;  and  they 
are  like  two  white  cliffs  seen  in  passing  from  the 
ship  at  the  beginning  of  its  voyage — gazed  at 
with  a  strange  interest  as  I  passed  them,  and  as 
they  receded  from  me,  until  they  faded  from 
sight  in  the  distance. 


IX 
DANDY 

A  STORY  OF  A  DOG 

HE  was  of  mixed  breed,  and  was  supposed 
to  have  a  strain  of  Dandy  Dinmont  blood 
which  gave  him  his  name.  A  big  ungainly  ani- 
mal with  a  rough  shaggy  coat  of  blue-grey  hair 
and  white  on  his  neck  and  clumsy  paws.  He 
looked  like  a  Sussex  sheep-dog  with  legs  re- 
duced to  half  their  proper  length.  He  was, 
when  I  first  knew  him,  getting  old  and  increas- 
ingly deaf  and  dim  of  sight,  otherwise  in  the 
best  of  health  and  spirits,  or  at  all  events  very 
good-tempered. 

Until  I  knew  Dandy  I  had  always  supposed 
that  the  story  of  Ludlam's  dog  was  pure  inven- 
tion, and  I  daresay  that  is  the  general  opinion 
about  it;  but  Dandy  made  me  reconsider  the 
subject,  and  eventually  I  came  to  believe  that 
Ludlam's  dog  did  exist  once  upon  a  time, 
centuries  ago  perhaps,  and  that  if  he  had  been 

74 


DANDY  75 

the  laziest  dog  in  the  world  Dandy  was  not  far 
behind  him  in  that  respect.  It  is  true  he  did 
not  lean  his  head  against  a  wall  to  bark;  he  ex- 
hibited his  laziness  in  other  ways.  He  barked 
often,  though  never  at  strangers;  he  welcomed 
every  visitor,  even  the  tax-collector,  with  tail- 
waggings  and  a  smile.  He  spent  a  good  deal  of 
his  time  in  the  large  kitchen,  where  he  had  a 
sofa  to  sleep  on,  and  when  the  two  cats  of  the 
house  wanted  an  hour's  rest  they  would  coil 
themselves  up  on  Dandy's  broad  shaggy  side, 
preferring  that  bed  to  cushion  or  rug.  They 
were  like  a  warm  blanket  over  him,  and  it  was 
a  sort  of  mutual  benefit  society.  After  an  hour's 
sleep  Dandy  would  go  out  for  a  short  constitu- 
tional as  far  as  the  neighbouring  thoroughfare, 
where  he  would  blunder  against  people,  wag 
his  tail  to  everybody,  and  then  come  back.  He 
had  six  or  eight  or  more  outings  each  day,  and, 
owing  to  doors  and  gates  being  closed  and  to 
his  lazy  disposition,  he  had  much  trouble  in  get- 
ting out  and  in.  First  he  would  sit  down  in  the 
hall  and  bark,  bark,  bark,  until  some  one  would 
come  to  open  the  door  for  him,  whereupon  he 
would  slowly  waddle  down  the  garden  path, 


76         A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

and  if  he  found  the  gate  closed  he  would  again 
sit  down  and  start  barking.  And  the  bark,  bark 
would  go  on  until  some  one  came  to  let  him  out. 
But  if  after  he  had  barked  about  twenty  or 
thirty  times  no  one  came,  he  would  deliberately 
open  the  gate  himself,  which  he  could  do  per- 
fectly well,  and  let  himself  out.  In  twenty  min- 
utes or  so  he  would  be  back  at  the  gate  and 
barking  for  admission  once  more,  and  finally,  if 
no  one  paid  any  attention,  letting  himself  in. 

Dandy  always  had  something  to  eat  at  meal- 
times, but  he  too  liked  a  snack  between  meals 
once  or  twice  a  day.  The  dog-biscuits  were  kept 
in  an  open  box  on  the  lower  dresser  shelf,  so 
that  he  could  get  one  "whenever  he  felt  so  dis- 
poged,"  but  he  didn't  like  the  trouble  this  ar- 
rangement gave  him,  so  he  would  sit  down  and 
start  barking,  and  as  he  had  a  bark  which  was 
both  deep  and  loud,  after  it  had  been  repeated 
a  dozen  times  at  intervals  of  five  seconds,  any 
person  who  happened  to  be  in  or  near  the 
kitchen  was  glad  to  give  him  his  biscuit  for  the 
sake  of  peace  and  quietness.  If  no  one  gave  it 
him,  he  would  then  take  it  out  himself  and  eat  it. 

Now  it  came  to  pass  that  during  the  last  year 


DANDY  77 

of  the  war  dog-biscuits,  like  many  other  articles 
of  food  for  man  and  beast,  grew  scarce,  and 
were  finally  not  to  be  had  at  all.  At  all  events, 
that  was  what  happened  in  Dandy's  town  of 
Penzance.  He  missed  his  biscuits  greatly  and 
often  reminded  us  of  it  by  barking;  then,  lest 
we  should  think  he  was  barking  about  some- 
thing else,  he  would  go  and  sniff  and  paw  at  the 
empty  box.  He  perhaps  thought  it  was  pure 
forgetfulness  on  the  part  of  those  of  the  house 
who  went  every  morning  to  do  the  marketing 
and  had  fallen  into  the  habit  of  returning  with- 
out any  dog-biscuits  in  the  basket.  One  day 
during  that  last  winter  of  scarcity  and  anxiety  I 
went  to  the  kitchen  and  found  the  floor  strewn 
all  over  with  the  fragments  of  Dandy's  biscuit- 
box.  Dandy  himself  had  done  it;  he  had 
dragged  the  box  from  its  place  out  into  the 
middle  of  the  floor,  and  then  deliberately  set 
himself  to  bite  and  tear  it  into  small  pieces  and 
scatter  them  about.  He  was  caught  at  it  just  as 
he  was  finishing  the  job,  and  the  kindly  person 
who  surprised  him  in  the  act  suggested  that  the 
reason  of  his  breaking  up  the  box  in  that  way 
was  that  he  got  something  of  the  biscuit  flavour 


78          A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

by  biting  the  pieces.  My  own  theory  was  that 
as  the  box  was  there  to  hold  biscuits  and  now 
held  none,  he  had  come  to  regard  it  as  useless— 
as  having  lost  its  function,  so  to  speak — also  that 
its  presence  there  was  an  insult  to  his  intelli- 
gence, a  constant  temptation  to  make  a  fool  of 
himself  by  visiting  it  half  a  dozen  times  a  day 
only  to  find  it  empty  as  usual.  Better,  then,  to 
get  rid  of  it  altogether,  and  no  doubt  when  he 
did  it  he  put  a  little  temper  into  the  business! 

Dandy,  from  the  time  I  first  knew  him,  was 
strictly  teetotal,  but  in  former  and  distant  days 
he  had  been  rather  fond  of  his  glass.  If  a  per- 
son held  up  a  glass  of  beer  before  him,  I  was 
told,  he  wagged  his  tail  in  joyful  anticipation, 
and  a  little  beer  was  always  given  him  at  meal- 
time. Then  he  had  an  experience,  which,  after 
a  little  hesitation,  I  have  thought  it  best  to  re- 
late, as  it  is  perhaps  the  most  curious  incident 
in  Dandy's  somewhat  uneventful  life. 

One  day  Dandy,  who  after  the  manner  of  his 
kind,  had  attached  himself  to  the  person  who 
was  always  willing  to  take  him  out  for  a  stroll, 
followed  his  friend  to  a  neighbouring  public- 
house,  where  the  said  friend  had  to  discuss  some 


DANDY  79 

business  matter  with  the  landlord.  They  went 
into  the  taproom,  and  Dandy,  finding  that  the 
business  was  going  to  be  a  rather  long  affair, 
settled  himself  down  to  have  a  nap.  Now  it 
chanced  that  a  barrel  of  beer  which  had  just 
been  broached  had  a  leaky  tap,  and  the  land- 
lord had  set  a  basin  on  the  floor  to  catch  the 
waste.  Dandy,  waking  from  his  nap  and  hear- 
ing the  trickling  sound,  got  up,  and  going  to 
the  basin  quenched  his  thirst,  after  which  he  re- 
sumed his  nap.  By-and-by  he  woke  again  and 
had  a  second  drink,  and  altogether  he  woke  and 
had  a  drink  five  or  six  times;  then,  the  business 
being  concluded,  they  went  out  together,  but  no 
sooner  were  they  in  the  fresh  air  than  Dandy 
began  to  exhibit  signs  of  inebriation.  He 
swerved  from  side  to  side,  colliding  with  the 
passers-by,  and  finally  fell  off  the  pavement  into 
the  swift  stream  of  water  which  at  that  point 
runs  in  the  gutter  at  one  side  of  the  street.  Get- 
ting out  of  the  water,  he  started  again,  trying  to 
keep  close  to  the  wall  to  save  himself  from  an- 
other ducking.  People  looked  curiously  at 
him,  and  by-and-by  they  began  to  ask  what  the 
matter  was.  "Is  your  dog  going  to  have  a  fit— 


8o         A   TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

or  what  is  it?"  they  asked.  Dandy's  friend  said 
he  didn't  know;  something  was  the  matter  no 
doubt,  and  he  would  take  him  home  as  quickly 
as  possible  and  see  to  it. 

When  they  finally  got  to  the  house  Dandy 
staggered  to  his  sofa,  and  succeeded  in  climbing 
on  to  it  and,  throwing  himself  on  his  cushion, 
went  fast  asleep,  and  slept  on  without  a  break 
until   the   following   morning.     Then   he    rose 
quite  refreshed  and  appeared  to  have  forgotten 
all  about  it;  but  that  day  when  at  dinner-time 
some  one  said  "Dandy"  and  held  up  a  glass  of 
beer,  instead  of  wagging  his  tail  as  usual  he 
dropped  it  between  his  legs  and  turned  away  in 
evident  disgust.     And  from  that  time  onward 
he  would  never  touch  it  with  his  tongue,  and  it 
was  plain  that  when  they  tried  to  tempt  him, 
setting  beer  before  him  and  smilingly  inviting 
him  to  drink,  he  knew  they  were  mocking  him, 
and  before  turning  away  he  would  emit  a  low 
growl  and  show  his  teeth.    It  was  the  one  thing 
that  put  him  out  and  would  make  him  angry 
with  his  friends  and  life  companions. 

I   should   not  have    related   this   incident   if 
Dandy  had  been  alive.    But  he  is  no  longer  with 


DANDY  8 1 

us.  He  was  old — half-way  between  fifteen  and 
sixteen:  it  seemed  as  though  he  had  waited  to 
see  the  end  of  the  war,  since  no  sooner  was  the 
armistice  proclaimed  than  he  began  to  decline 
rapidly.  Gone  deaf  and  blind,  he  still  insisted 
on  taking  several  constitutionals  every  day,  and 
would  bark  as  usual  at  the  gate,  and  if  no  one 
came  to  let  him  out  or  admit  him,  he  would 
open  it  for  himself  as  before.  This  went  on  till 
January,  1919,  when  some  of  the  boys  he  knew 
were  coming  back  to  Penzance  and  to  the  house. 
Then  he  established  himself  on  his  sofa,  and 
we  knew  that  his  end  was  near,  for  there  he 
would  sleep  all  day  and  all  night,  declining 
food.  It  is  customary  in  this  country  to  chloro- 
form a  dog  and  give  him  a  dose  of  strychnine 
to  "put  him  out  of  his  misery."  But  it  was  not 
necessary  in  this  case,  as  he  was  not  in  misery; 
not  a  groan  did  he  ever  emit,  waking  or  sleep- 
ing; and  if  you  put  a  hand  on  him  he  would 
look  up  and  wag  his  tail  just  to  let  you  know  that 
it  was  well  with  him.  And  in  his  sleep  he 
passed  away — a  perfect  case  of  euthanasia — and 
was  buried  in  the  large  garden  near  the  second 
apple-tree. 


X 

THE  SAMPHIRE  GATHERER 

AT  sunset,  when  the  strong  wind  from  the 
sea  was  beginning  to  feel  cold,  I  stood  on 
the  top  of  the  sandhill  looking  down  at  an  old 
woman  hurrying  about  over  the  low  damp 
ground  beneath — a  bit  of  sea-flat  divided  from 
the  sea  by  the  ridge  of  sand;  and  I  wondered 
at  her,  because  her  figure  was  that  of  a  feeble 
old  woman,  yet  she  moved — I  had  almost  said 
flitted — over  that  damp  level  ground  in  a  sur- 
prisingly swift  light  manner,  pausing  at  inter- 
vals to  stoop  and  gather  something  from  the 
surface.  But  I  couldn't  see  her  distinctly 
enough  to  satisfy  myself:  the  sun  was  sinking 
below  the  horizon,  and  that  dimness  in  the  air 
and  coldness  in  the  wind  at  day's  decline,  when 
the  year  too  was  declining,  made  all  objects  look 
dim.  Going  down  to  her  I  found  that  she  was 
old,  with  thin  grey  hair  on  an  uncovered  head, 
a  lean  dark  face  with  regular  features  and  grey 

82 


THE   SAMPHIRE  GATHERER  83 

eyes  that  were  not  old  and  looked  steadily  at 
mine,  affecting  me  with  a  sudden  mysterious 
sadness.  For  they  were  unsmiling  eyes  and 
themselves  expressed  an  unutterable  sadness,  as 
it  appeared  to  me  at  the  first  swift  glance;  or 
perhaps  not  that,  as  it  presently  seemed,  but  a 
shadowy  something  which  sadness  had  left  in 
them,  when  all  pleasure  and  all  interest  in  life 
forsook  her,  with  all  affections,  and  she  no 
longer  cherished  either  memories  or  hopes. 
This  may  be  nothing  but  conjecture  or  fancy, 
but  if  she  had  been  a  visitor  from  another  world 
she  could  not  have  seemed  more  strange  to  me. 
I  asked  her  what  she  was  doing  there  so  late 
in  the  day,  and  she  answered  in  a  quiet  even 
voice  which  had  a  shadow  in  it  too,  that  she  was 
gathering  samphire  of  that  kind  which  grows 
on  the  flat  saltings  and  has  a  dull  green  leek-like 
fleshy  leaf.  At  this  season,  she  informed  me,  it 
was  fit  for  gathering  to  pickle  and  put  by  for 
use  during  the  year.  She  carried  a  pail  to  put 
it  in,  and  a  table-knife  in  her  hand  to  dig  the 
plants  up  by  the  roots,  and  she  also  had  an  old 
sack  in  which  she  put  every  dry  stick  and  chip 
of  wood  she  came  across.  She  added  that  she 


84         A  TRAVELLER  IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

had  gathered  samphire  at  this  same  spot  every 
August  end  for  very  many  years. 

I  prolonged  the  conversation,  questioning  her 
and  listening  with  affected  interest  to  her  me- 
chanical answers,  while  trying  to  fathom  those 
unsmiling,  unearthly  eyes  that  looked  so  stead- 
ily at  mine. 

And  presently,  as  we  talked,  a  babble  of  hu- 
man voices  reached  our  ears,  and  half  turning 
we  saw  the  crowd,  or  rather  procession,  of 
golfers  coming  from  the  golf-house  by  the  links 
where  they  had  been  drinking  tea.  Ladies  and 
gentlemen  players,  forty  or  more  of  them,  fol- 
lowing in  a  loose  line,  in  couples  and  small 
groups,  on  their  way  to  the  Golfers'  Hotel,  a 
little  further  up  the  coast;  a  remarkably  good- 
looking  lot  with  well-fed  happy  faces,  well- 
dressed  and  in  a  merry  mood,  all  freely  talking 
and  laughing.  Some  were  staying  at  the  hotel, 
and  for  the  others  a  score  or  so  of  motor-cars 
were  standing  before  its  gates  to  take  them  in- 
land to  their  homes,  or  to  houses  where  they 
were  staying. 

We  suspended  the  conversation  while  they 
were  passing  us,  within  three  yards  of  where 


THE   SAMPHIRE   GATHERER  85 

we  stood,  and  as  they  passed  the  story  of  the 
links  where  they  had  been  amusing  themselves 
since  luncheon-time  came  into  my  mind.  The 
land  there  was  owned  by  an  old,  an  ancient, 
family;  they  had  occupied  it,  so  it  is  said,  since 
the  Conquest;  but  the  head  of  the  house  was 
now  poor,  having  no  house  property  in  London, 
no  coal  mines  in  Wales,  no  income  from  any 
other  source  than  the  land,  the  twenty  or  thirty 
thousand  acres  let  for  farming.  Even  so  he 
would  not  have  been  poor,  strictly  speaking,  but 
for  the  sons,  who  preferred  a  life  of  pleasure  in 
town,  where  they  probably  had  private  estab- 
lishments of  their  own.  At  all  events  they  kept 
race-horses,  and  had  their  cars,  and  lived  in  the 
best  clubs,  and  year  by  year  the  patient  old 
father  was  called  upon  to  discharge  their  debts 
of  honour.  It  was  a  painful  position  for  so  es- 
timable a  man  to  be  placed  in,  and  he  was  much 
pitied  by  his  friends  and  neighbours,  who  re- 
garded him  as  a  worthy  representative  of  the 
best  and  oldest  family  in  the  county.  But  he 
was  compelled  to  do  what  he  could  to  make 
both  ends  meet,  and  one  of  the  little  things  he 
did  was  to  establish  golf-links  over  a  mile  or  so 


86         A   TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

of  sand-hills,  lying  between  the  ancient  coast 
village  and  the  sea,  and  to  build  and  run  a  Golf- 
ers* Hotel  in  order  to  attract  visitors  from  all 
parts.  In  this  way,  Incidentally,  the  villagers 
were  cut  off  from  their  old  direct  way  to  the  sea 
and  deprived  of  those  barren  dunes,  which  were 
their  open  space  and  recreation  ground  and  had 
stood  them  in  the  place  of  a  common  for  long 
centuries.  They  were  warned  off  and  told  that 
they  must  use  a  path  to  the  beach  which  took 
them  over  half  a  mile  from  the  village.  And 
they  had  been  very  humble  and  obedient  and 
had  made  no  complaint.  Indeed,  the  agent  had 
assured  them  that  they  had  every  reason  to  Ee 
grateful  to  the  overlord,  since  in  return  for  that 
trivial  inconvenience  they  had  been  put  to  they 
would  have  the  golfers  there,  and  there  would 
be  employment  for  some  of  the  village  boys  as 
caddies.  Nevertheless,  I  had  discovered  that 
they  were  not  grateful  but  considered  that  an 
injustice  had  been  done  to  them,  and  it  rankled 
in  their  hearts. 

I  remembered  all  this  while  the  golfers  were 
streaming  by,  and  wondered  if  this  poor  woman 
did  not,  like  her  fellow-villagers,  cherish  a 


THE  SAMPHIRE  GATHERER  87 

secret  bitterness  against  those  who  had  deprived 
them  of  the  use  of  the  dunes  where  for  genera- 
tions they  had  been  accustomed  to  walk  or  sit 
or  lie  on  the  loose  yellow  sands  among  the  bar- 
ren grasses,  and  had  also  cut  off  their  direct 
way  to  the  sea  where  they  went  daily  in  search 
of  bits  of  firewood  and  whatever  else  the  waves 
threw  up  which  would  be  a  help  to  them  in 
their  poor  lives. 

If  it  be  so,  I  thought,  some  change  will  surely 
come  into  those  unchanging  eyes  at  the  sight  of 
all  these  merry,  happy  golfers  on  their  way  to 
their  hotel  and  their  cars  and  luxurious  homes. 

But  though  I  watched  her  face  closely  there 
was  no  change,  no  faintest  trace  of  ill-feeling  or 
feeling  of  any  kind;  only  that  same  shadow 
which  had  been  there  was  there  still,  and  her 
fixed  eyes  were  like  those  of  a  captive  bird  or 
animal,  that  gaze  at  us,  yet  seem  not  to  see  us 
but  to  look  through  and  beyond  us.  And  it  was 
the  same  when  they  had  all  gone  by  and  we  fin- 
ished our  talk  and  I  put  money  in  her  hand; 
she  thanked  me  without  a  smile,  in  the  same 
quiet  even  tone  of  voice  in  which  she  had  re- 
plied to  my  question  about  the  samphire. 


88         A  TRAVELLER  IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

I  went  up  once  more  to  the  top  of  the  ridge, 
and  looking  down  saw  her  again  as  I  had  seen 
her  at  first,  only  dimmer,  swiftly,  lightly  mov- 
ing or  flitting  moth-like  or  ghost-like  over  the 
low  flat  salting,  still  gathering  samphire  in  the 
cold  wind,  and  the  thought  that  came  to  me  was 
that  I  was  looking  at  and  had  been  interviewing 
a  being  that  was  very  like  a  ghost,  or  in  any  case 
a  soul,  a  something  which  could  not  be  de- 
scribed, like  certain  atmospheric  effects  in  earth 
and  water  and  sky  which  are  ignored  by  the 
landscape  painter.  To  protect  himself  he  cul- 
tivates what  is  called  the  "sloth  of  the  eye" :  he 
thrusts  his  fingers  into  his  ears  so  to  speak,  not 
to  hear  that  mocking  voice  that  follows  and 
mocks  him  with  his  miserable  limitations.  He 
who  seeks  to  convey  his  impressions  with  a  pen 
is  almost  as  badly  off:  the  most  he  can  do  in 
such  instances  as  the  one  related,  is  to  endeavour 
to  convey  the  emotion  evoked  by  what  he  has 
witnessed. 

Let  me  then  take  the  case  of  the  man  who  has 
trained  his  eyes,  or  rather  whose  vision  has  un- 
consciously trained  itself,  to  look  at  every  face 
he  meets,  to  find  in  most  cases  something,  how- 


THE   SAMPHIRE   GATHERER  89 

ever  little,  of  the  person's  inner  life.  Such  a 
man  could  hardly  walk  the  length  of  the  Strand 
and  Fleet-street  or  of  Oxford-street  without 
being  startled  at  the  sight  of  a  face  which  haunts 
him  with  its  tragedy,  its  mystery,  the  strange 
things  it  has  half  revealed.  But  it  does  not 
haunt  him  long;  another  arresting  face  follows, 
and  then  another,  and  the  impressions  all  fade 
and  vanish  from  the  memory  in  a  little  while. 
But  from  time  to  time,  at  long  intervals,  once 
perhaps  in  a  lustrum,  he  will  encounter  a  face 
that  will  not  cease  to  haunt  him,  whose  vivid 
impression  will  not  fade  for  years.  It  was  a 
face  and  eyes  of  that  kind  which  I  met  in  the 
samphire  gatherer  on  that  cold  evening;  but  the 
mystery  of  it  is  a  mystery  still. 


XI 
A  SURREY  VILLAGE 

THROUGH  the  scattered  village  of  Churt, 
in  its  deepest  part,  runs  a  clear  stream, 
broad  in  places,  where  it  spreads  over  the 
road-way  and  is  so  shallow  that  the  big  cart- 
horses are  scarce  wetted  above  their  fetlocks  in 
crossing;  in  other  parts  narrow  enough  for  a 
man  to  jump  over,  yet  deep  enough  for  the  trout 
to  hide  in.  And  which  is  the  prettiest  one  finds 
it  hard  to  say — the  wide  splashy  places  where 
the  cattle  come  to  drink,  and  the  real  cow  and 
the  illusory  inverted  cow  beneath  it  are  to  be 
seen  touching  their  lips;  or  where  the  oaks  and 
ashes  and  elms  stretch  and  mingle  their  hori- 
zontal branches; — where  there  is  a  green  leafy 
canopy  above  and  its  green  reflection  below  with 
the  glassy  current  midway  between.  On  one 
side  the  stream  is  Surrey,  on  the  other  Hamp- 
shire. Where  the  two  counties  meet  there  is  a 
vast  extent  of  heath-land — brown  desolate 
moors  and  hills  so  dark  as  to  look  almost  black. 

90 


A  SURREY  VILLAGE  91 

It  is  wild,  and  its  wildness  is  of  that  kind  which 
comes  of  a  barren  soil.  It  is  a  country  best  ap- 
preciated by  those  who,  rich  or  poor,  take  life 
easily,  who  love  all  aspects  of  nature,  all 
weathers,  and  above  everything  the  liberty 
of  wide  horizons.  To  others  the  cry  of  "Back 
to  the  land"  would  have  a  somewhat  dreary  and 
mocking  sound  in  such  a  place,  like  that  curious 
cry,  half  laughter  and  half  wail,  which  the 
peewit  utters  as  he  anxiously  winnows  the  air 
with  creaking  wings  above  the  pedestrian's 
head.  But  it  is  not  all  of  this  character.  From 
some  black  hill-top  one  looks  upon  a  green  ex- 
panse, fresh  and  lively  by  contrast  as  the  young 
leaves  of  deciduous  trees  in  spring,  with  black 
again  or  dark  brown  of  pine  and  heath  beyond. 
It  is  the  oasis  where  Churt  is.  The  vivifying 
spirit  of  the  wind  at  that  height,  and  that  vision 
of  verdure  beneath,  produce  an  exhilarating 
effect  on  the  mind.  It  is  common  knowledge 
that  the  devil  once  lived  in  or  haunted  these 
parts:  now  my  hill-top  fancy  tells  me  that  once 
upon  a  time  a  better  being,  a  wandering  angel, 
flew  over  the  country,  and  looking  down  and 
seeing  it  so  dark-hued  and  desolate,  a  compas- 


92         A  TRAVELLER  IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

sionate  impulse  took  him,  and  unclasping  his 
light  mantle  he  threw  it  down,  so  that  the  hu- 
man inhabitants  should  not  be  without  that 
sacred  green  colour  that  elsewhere  beautifies  the 
earth.  There  to  this  day  it  lies  where  it  fell — 
a  mantle  of  moist  vivid  green,  powdered  with 
silver  and  gold,  embroidered  with  all  floral 
hues;  all  reds  from  the  faint  blush  on  the  petals 
of  the  briar-rose  to  the  deep  crimson  of  the  red 
trifolium;  and  all  yellows,  and  blues,  and 
purples. 

It  was  pleasant  to  return  from  a  ramble  over 
the  rough  heather  to  the  shade  of  the  green  vil- 
lage lanes,  to  stand  aside  in  some  deep  narrow 
road  to  make  room  for  a  farmer's  waggon  to 
pass,  drawn  by  five  or  six  ponderous  horses; 
to  meet  the  cows  too,  smelling  of  milk  and  new- 
mown  hay,  attended  by  the  small  cow-boy.  One 
notices  in  most  rural  districts  how  stunted  in 
growth  many  of  the  boys  of  the  labourers  are; 
here  I  was  particularly  struck  by  it  on  account 
of  the  fine  physique  of  many  of  the  young  men. 
It  is  possible  that  the  growing  time  may  be  later 
and  more  rapid  here  than  in  most  places.  Some 
of  the  young  men  are  exceptionally  tall,  and 


A  SURREY  VILLAGE  93 

there  was  a  larger  percentage  of  tall  handsome 
women  than  I  have  seen  in  any  village  in  Surrey 
and  Hampshire.  But  the  children  were  almost 
invariably  too  small  for  their  years.  The  most 
stunted  specimen  was  a  little  boy  I  met  near 
Hindhead.  He  was  thin,  with  a  dry  wizened 
face,  and  looked  at  the  most  about  eight  years 
old;  he  assured  me  that  he  was  twelve.  I  en- 
gaged this  gnome-like  creature  to  carry  some- 
thing for  me,  and  we  had  three  or  four  miles' 
ramble  together.  A  curious  couple  we  must 
have  seemed — a  giant  and  a  pigmy,  the  pigmy 
looking  considerably  older  than  the  giant.  He 
was  a  heath-cutter's  child,  the  eldest  of  seven 
children!  They  were  very  poor,  but  he  could 
earn  nothing  himself,  except  by  gathering 
whortleberries  in  their  season;  then  he  said,  all 
seven  of  them  turned  out  with  their  parents,  the 
youngest  in  its  mother's  arms.  I  questioned 
him  about  the  birds  of  the  district;  he  stoutly 
maintained  that  he  recognised  only  four,  and 
proceeded  to  name  them. 

"Here  is  another,"  said  I,  "a  fifth  you  didn't 
name,  singing  in  the  bushes  half  a  dozen  yards 
from  where  we  stand — the  best  singer  of  all." 


94          A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

"I  did  name  it,"  he  returned,  "that's  a 
thrush." 

It  was  a  nightingale,  a  bird  he  did  not  know. 
But  he  knew  a  thrush — it  was  one  of  the  four 
birds  he  knew,  and  he  stuck  to  it  that  it  was  a 
thrush  singing.  Afterwards  he  pointed  out  the 
squalid-looking  cottage  he  lived  in.  It  was  on 
the  estate  of  a  great  lady. 

"Tell  me,"  I  said,  "is  she  much  liked  on  the 
estate?" 

He  pondered  the  question  for  a  few  moments, 
then  replied,  "Some  likes  her  and  some  don't," 
and  not  a  word  more  would  he  say  on  that  sub- 
ject. A  curious  amalgam  of  stupidity  and 
shrewdness;  a  bad  observer  of  bird-life,  but  a 
cautious  little  person  in  answering  leading  ques- 
tions; he  was  evidently  growing  up  (or  not  do- 
ing so)  in  the  wrong  place. 

Going  out  for  a  stroll  in  the  evening,  I  came 
to  a  spot  where  two  small  cottages  stood  on  one 
side  of  the  road,  and  a  large  pond  fringed  with 
rushes  and  a  coppice  on  the  other.  Just  by  the 
cottage  five  boys  were  amusing  themselves  by 
throwing  stones  at  a  mark,  talking,  laughing  and 
shouting  at  their  play.  Not  many  yards  from 


A  SURREY  VILLAGE  95 

the  noisy  boys  some  fowls  were  picking  about 
on  the  turf  close  to  the  pond;  presently  out  of 
the  rushes  came  a  moorhen  and  joined  them. 
It  was  in  fine  feather,  very  glossy,  the  brightest 
nuptial  yellow  and  scarlet  on  beak  and  shield. 
It  moved  about,  heedless  of  my  presence  and  of 
the  noisy  stone-throwing  boys,  with  that  pretty 
dignity  and  unconcern  which  make  it  one  of  the 
most  attractive  birds.  What  a  contrast  its  ap- 
pearance and  motions  presented  to  those  of  the 
rough-hewn,  ponderous  fowls,  among  which  it 
moved  so  daintily!  I  was  about  to  say  that  he 
was  "just  like  a  modern  gentleman"  in  the 
midst  of  a  group  of  clodhoppers  in  rough  old 
coats,  hob-nailed  boots,  and  wisps  of  straw 
round  their  corduroys,  standing  with  clay  pipes 
in  their  mouths,  each  with  a  pot  of  beer  in  his 
hand.  Such  a  comparison  would  have  been  an 
insult  to  the  moorhen.  Nevertheless  some  am- 
bitious young  gentleman  of  aesthetic  tastes  might 
do  worse  than  get  himself  up  in  this  bird's 
livery.  An  open  coat  of  olive-brown  silk,  with 
an  oblique  white  band  at  the  side;  waistcoat  or 
cummerbund,  and  knickerbockers,  slaty  grey; 
Stockings  and  shoes  of  olive  green;  and,  for  a 


96         A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

touch  of  bright  colour,  an  orange  and  scarlet 
tie.  It  would  be  pleasant  to  meet  him  in  Picca- 
dilly. But  he  would  never,  never  be  able  to  get 
that  quaint  pretty  carriage.  The  "Buzzard 
lope"  and  the  crane's  stately  stride  are  imitable 
by  man,  but  not  the  moorhen's  gait.  And  what 
a  mess  of  it  our  young  gentleman  would  make 
in  attempting  at  each  step  to  throw  up  his  coat 
tails  in  order  to  display  conspicuously  the  white 
silk  underlining! 

While  I  watched  the  pretty  creature,  musing 
sadly  the  wrhile  on  the  ugliness  of  men's  gar- 
ments, a  sudden  storm  of  violent  rasping 
screams  burst  from  some  holly  bushes  a  few 
yards  away.  It  proceeded  from  three  excited 
jays,  but  whether  they  were  girding  at  me,  the 
shouting  boys,  or  a  skulking  cat  among  the 
bushes,  I  could  not  make  out. 

When  I  finally  left  this  curious  company- 
noisy  boys,  great  yellow  feather-footed  fowls, 
dainty  moorhen  and  vociferous  jays — it  was 
late,  but  another  amusing  experience  was  in 
store  for  me.  Leaving  the  village  I  went  up 
the  hill  to  the  Devil's  Jumps  to  see  the  sun  set. 
The  Devil,  as  I  have  said,  was  much  about  these 


A  SURREY  VILLAGE  97 

parts  in  former  times;  his  habits  were  quite  fa- 
miliar to  the  people,  and  his  name  became  asso- 
ciated with  some  of  the  principal  landmarks 
and  features  of  the  landscape.  It  was  his  cus- 
tom to  go  up  into  these  rocks,  where,  after 
drawing  his  long  tail  over  his  shoulder  to  have 
it  out  of  his  way,  he  would  take  one  of  his  great 
flying  leaps  or  jumps.  On  the  opposite  side  of 
the  village  we  have  the  Poor  Devil's  Bottom — 
a  deep  treacherous  hole  that  cuts  like  a  ravine 
through  the  moor,  into  which  the  unfortunate 
fellow  once  fell  and  broke  several  of  his  bones. 
A  little  further  away,  on  Hindhead,  we  have 
the  Devil's  Punch  Bowl,  that  huge  basin-shaped 
hollow  on  the  hill  which  has  now  become  almost 
as  famous  as  Flamborough  Head  or  the  Valley 
of  Rocks. 

At  the  Jumps  a  shower  came  on,  and  to  escape 
a  wetting  I  crept  into  a  hole  or  hollow  in  the 
rude  mass  of  black  basaltic  rock  which  stands 
like  a  fortress  or  ruined  castle  on  the  summit  of 
the  hill.  When  the  shower  was  nearly  over  I 
heard  the  wing-beats  and  low  guttural  voice  of 
a  cuckoo;  he  did  not  see  my  crouching  form  in 
the  hollow  and  settled  on  a  projecting  block  of 


98         A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

stone  close  to  me — not  three  yards  from  my 
head.  Presently  he  began  to  call,  and  it  struck 
me  as  very  curious  that  his  voice  did  not  sound 
louder  or  different  in  quality  than  when  heard 
at  a  distance  of  forty  or  fifty  yards.  When  he 
had  finished  calling  and  flown  away  I  crept  out 
of  my  hole  and  walked  back  over  the  wet  heath, 
thinking  now  of  the  cuckoo  and  now  of  that 
half  natural,  half  supernatural  but  not  very  sub- 
lime being  who,  as  I  have  said,  was  formerly  a 
haunter  of  these  parts.  This  was  a  question  that 
puzzled  my  mind.  It  is  easy  to  say  that  legends 
of  the  Devil  are  common  enough  all  over  the 
land,  and  date  back  to  old  monkish  times  or  to 
the  beginning  of  Christianity,  when  the  spiritual 
enemy  was  very  much  in  man's  thoughts;  the 
curious  thing  is,  that  the  devil  associated  in  tra- 
dition with  certain  singular  features  in  the 
landscape,  as  it  is  here  in  this  Surrey  village, 
and  in  a  thousand  other  places,  has  little  or  no 
resemblance  to  the  true  and  only  Satan.  He  is 
at  his  greatest  a  sort  of  demi-god,  or  a  semi- 
human  being  or  monster  of  abnormal  power 
and  wildly  eccentric  habits,  but  not  really  bad. 
Thus,  I  was  told  by  a  native  of  Churt  that  when 


A  SURREY  VILLAGE  gg 

the  Devil  met  with  that  serious  accident  which 
gave  its  name  to  the  Poor  Devil's  Bottom,  his 
painful  cries  and  groans  attracted  the  villagers, 
and  they  ministered  to  him,  giving  him  food 
and  drink  and  applying  such  remedies  as  they 
knew  of  to  his  hurts  until  he  recovered  and  got 
out  of  the  hole.  Whether  or  not  this  legend  has 
ever  been  recorded  I  cannot  say;  one  is  struck 
with  its  curious  resemblance  to  some  of  the 
giant  legends  of  the  west  of  England.  Near 
Devizes  there  is  a  deep  impression  in  the  earth 
about  which  a  very  different  story  is  told :  it  is 
called  the  Devil's  Jumps  and  is,  I  believe,  sup- 
posed to  be  an  entrance  to  his  subterranean 
dwelling-place.  He  jumps  down  through  that 
hole,  the  earth  opens  to  receive  him,  and  closes 
behind  him.  And  it  is  (or  was)  believed  that 
if  any  person  will  run  three  times  round  the 
hole  the  Devil  will  issue  from  it  and  start  off 
in  chase  of  a  hare!  Why  he  comes  forth  and 
chases  a  hare  nobody  knows. 

It  was  only  recently,  when  in  Cornwall,  the 
most  legendary  of  the  counties,  that  I  found  out 
who  and  what  this  rural  village  devil  I  had 
been  thinking  of  really  was.  In  Cornwall  one 


ioo       A  TRAVELLER  IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

finds  many  legends  of  the  Devil,  as  many  in  fact 
as  in  Flintshire,  where  the  Devil  has  left  so 
many  memorials  on  the  downs,  but  they  are  few 
to  those  relating  to  the  giants.  These  legends 
were  collected  by  Robert  Hunt,  and  first  pub- 
lished over  half  a  century  ago  in  his  Popular 
Romances  of  the  West  of  England,  and  he 
points  out  in  this  work  that  "devil"  in  most  of 
the  legends  appears  to  be  but  another  name  for 
"giant,"  that  in  many  cases  the  character  of  the 
being  is  practically  the  same.  He  believes  that 
traditions  of  giants,  which  probably  date  back 
to  prehistoric  times,  were  once  common  all  over 
the  country,  that  they  were  always  associated 
with  certain  impressive  features  in  the  land- 
scape— grotesque  hills,  chasms  and  hollows  in 
the  downs  and  huge  masses  of  rock;  that  the 
early  teachers  of  Christianity,  anxious  to  kill 
these  traditions,  or  to  blot  out  a  false  belief  or 
superstition  with  the  darker  and  more  terrible 
image  of  a  powerful  being  at  war  with  man, 
taught  that  "giant"  was  but  another  name  for 
Devil.  If  this  is  so,  the  teaching  was  not  alto- 
gether good  policy.  The  giants,  it  is  true,  were 
an  awesome  folk  and  flung  immense  rocks  about 


A  SURREY  VILLAGE  101 

in  a  reckless  manner  and  did  many  other  mad 
things;  and  there  were  some  that  were  wholly 
bad,  just  as  there  are  rogue  elephants  and  as 
there  are  black  sheep  in  the  human  flock,  but 
they  were  not  really  bad  as  a  rule,  and  certainly 
not  too  intelligent.  Even  little  men  with  their 
cunning  little  brains  could  get  the  better  of 
them.  The  result  of  such  teaching  could  only 
be  that  the  Devil  would  be  regarded  as  not  the 
unmitigated  monster  they  had  been  told  that 
he  was,  nor  without  human  weaknesses  and 
virtues.  When  we  say  now  that  he  is  not  "as 
black  as  he  is  painted"  we  may  be  merely  re- 
peating what  was  being  said  by  the  common 
people  of  England  in  the  days  of  St.  Augustine 
and  St.  Colomb,  and  of  the  Irish  missionaries 
in  Cornwall. 


XII 
A  WILTSHIRE  VILLAGE 

"TT7HAT  is  your  nearest  village?"  I  asked 

*  *  of  a  labourer  I  met  on  the  road  one 
bleak  day  in  early  spring,  after  a  great  frost: 
for  I  had  walked  far  enough  and  was  cold  and 
tired,  and  it  seemed  to  me  that  it  would  be  well 
to  find  shelter  for  the  night  and  a  place  to  set- 
tle down  in  for  a  season. 

"Burbage,"  he  answered,  pointing  the  way 
to  it. 

And  when  I  came  to  it,  and  walked  slowly 
and  thoughtfully  the  entire  length  of  its  one 
long  street  or  road,  my  sister  said  to  me: 

"Yet  another  old  ancient  village!"  and  then, 
with  a  slight  tremor  in  her  voice,  aAnd  you  are 
going  to  stay  in  it!" 

"Yes,"  I  replied,  in  a  tone  of  studied  indif- 
ference :  but  as  to  whether  it  was  ancient  or  not 
I  could  not  say; — I  had  never  heard  its  name 
before,  and  knew  nothing  about  it:  doubtless  it 
was  characteristic 

102 


A  WILTSHIRE  VILLAGE  103 

"That  weary  word,"  she  murmured. 

— But  it  was  neither  strikingly  picturesque, 
nor  quaint,  nor  did  I  wish  it  were  either  one  or 
the  other,  nor  anything  else  attractive  or  re- 
markable, since  I  sought  only  for  a  quiet  spot 
where  my  brain  might  think  the  thoughts  and 
my  hand  do  the  work  that  occupied  me.  A  vil- 
lage remote,  rustic,  commonplace,  that  would 
make  no  impression  on  my  preoccupied  mind 
and  leave  no  lasting  image,  nor  anything  but 
a  faint  and  fading  memory. 

Thus  I  pacified  Psyche  and  kissed  her, 
And  tempted  her  out  of  her  gloom — 
And  conquered  her  scruples  and  gloom. 

And  fortune  favoured  her,  all  things  conspir- 
ing to  keep  me  content  to  walk  in  that  path 
which  I  had  so  readily,  so  lightly,  promised  to 
keep:  for  the  work  to  be  done  was  bread  and 
cheese  to  me,  and  in  a  sense  to  her,  and  had  to 
be  done,  and  there  was  nothing  to  distract  at- 
tention. 

It  was  quiet  in  my  chosen  cottage,  in  the  low- 
ceilinged  room  where  I  usually  sat:  outside,  the 
walls  were  covered  with  ivy  which  made  it  like 


104       A  TRAVELLER  IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

a  lonely  lodge  in  a  wood;  and  when  I  opened 
my  small  outward-opening  latticed  window 
there  was  no  sound  except  the  sighing  of  the 
wind  in  the  old  yew  tree  growing  beside  and 
against  the  wall,  and  at  intervals  the  chirruping 
of  a  pair  of  sparrows  that  flew  up  from  time  to 
time  from  the  road  with  long  straws  in  their 
bills.  They  were  building  a  nest  beneath  my 
window — possibly  it  was  the  first  nest  made  that 
year  in  all  this  country. 

All  the  day  long  it  was  quiet;  and  when,  tired 
of  work,  I  went  out  and  away  from  the  village 
across  the  wide  vacant  fields,  there  was  nothing 
to  attract  the  eye.  The  deadly  frost  which  had 
held  us  for  long  weeks  in  its  grip  had  gone,  for 
it  was  now  drawing  to  the  end  of  March,  but 
winter  was  still  in  the  air  and  in  the  earth.  Day 
after  day  a  dull  cloud  was  over  all  the  sky  and 
the  wind  blew  cold  from  the  north-east.  The 
aspect  of  the  country,  as  far  as  one  could  see  in 
that  level  plain,  was  wintry  and  colourless.  The 
hedges  in  that  part  are  kept  cut  and  trimmed  so 
closely  that  they  seemed  less  like  hedges  than 
mere  faint  greyish  fences  of  brushwood,  divid- 
ing field  from  field:  they  would  not  have  af- 


A  WILTSHIRE  VILLAGE  105 

forded  shelter  to  a  hedge-sparrow.  The  trees 
were  few  and  far  apart — grey  naked  oaks,  un- 
visited  even  by  the  tits  that  find  their  food  in 
bark  and  twig;  the  wide  fields  between  were 
bare  and  devoid  of  life  of  man  or  beast  or  bird. 
Ploughed  and  grass  lands  were  equally  desolate; 
for  the  grass  was  last  year's,  long  dead  and  now 
of  that  neutral,  faded,  and  palest  of  all  pale  dead 
colours  in  nature.  It  is  not  white  nor  yellow,  and 
there  is  no  name  for  it.  Looking  down  when  I 
walked  in  the  fields  the  young  spring  grass  could 
be  seen  thrusting  up  its  blades  among  the  old 
and  dead,  but  at  a  distance  of  a  few  yards  these 
delicate  living  green  threads  were  invisible. 

Coming  back  out  of  the  bleak  wind  it  always 
seemed  strangely  warm  in  the  village  street — it 
was  like  coming  into  a  room  in  which  a  fire  has 
been  burning  all  day.  So  grateful  did  I  find  this 
warmth  of  the  deep  old  sheltered  road,  so  vocal 
too  and  full  of  life  did  it  seem  after  the  pallor 
and  silence  of  the  desolate  world  without,  that 
I  made  it  my  favourite  walk,  measuring  its 
length  from  end  to  end.  Nor  was  it  strange  that 
at  last,  unconsciously,  in  spite  of  a  preoccupied 
brain  and  of  the  assurance  given  that  I  would 


io6        A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

reside  in  the  village,  like  a  snail  in  "its  shell, 
without  seeing  it,  an  impression  began  to  form 
and  an  influence  to  be  felt. 

Some  vague  speculations  passed  through  my 
mind  as  to  how  old  the  village  might  be.  I  had 
heard  some  person  remark  that  it  had  formerly 
been  much  more  populous,  that  many  of  its 
people  had  from  time  to  time  drifted  away  to 
the  towns;  their  old  empty  cottages  pulled 
down  and  no  new  ones  built.  The  road  was 
deep  and  the  cottages  on  either  side  stoocl  six  to 
eight  or  nine  feet  above  it.  Where  a  cottage 
stood  close  to  the  edge  of  the  road  and  faced  it, 
the  door  was  reached  by  a  flight  of  stone  or 
brick  steps;  at  such  cottages  the  landing  above 
the  steps  was  like  a  balcony,  where  one  could 
stand  and  look  down  upon  a  passing  cart,  or  the 
daily  long  straggling  procession  of  children  go- 
ing to  or  returning  from  the  village  school.  I 
counted  the  steps  that  led  up  to  my  own  front 
door  and  landing  place  and  found  there  were 
ten:  I  took  it  that  each  step  represented  a  cen- 
tury's wear  of  the  road  by  hoof  and  wheel  and 
human  feet,  and  the  conclusion  was  thus  that 
the  village  was  a  thousand  years  old — probably 


A  WILTSHIRE  VILLAGE  107 

it  was  over  two  thousand.  A  few  centuries  more 
or  less  did  not  seem  to  matter  much;  the  subject 
did  not  interest  me  in  the  least,  my  passing 
thought  about  it  was  an  idle  straw  showing 
which  way  the  mental  wind  was  blowing. 

Albeit  half-conscious  of  what  that  way  was,  I 
continued  to  assure  Psyche — my  sister — that  all 
was  going  well:  that  if  she  would  only  keep 
quiet  there  would  be  no  trouble,  seeing  that  I 
knew  my  own  weakness  so  well — a  habit  of 
dropping  the  thing  I  am  doing  because  some- 
thing more  interesting  always  crops  up.  Here 
fortunately  for  us  (and  our  bread  and  cheese) 
there  was  nothing  interesting — ab-so-lute-ly. 

But  in  the  end,  when  the  work  was  finished, 
the  image  that  had  been  formed  could  no  longer 
be  thrust  away  and  forgotten.  It  was  there,  an 
entity  as  well  as  an  image — an  intelligent  mas- 
terful being  who  said  to  me  not  in  words  but 
very  plainly:  Try  to  ignore  me  and  It  will  be 
worse  for  you:  a  secret  want  will  continually 
disquiet  you:  recognize  my  existence  and  right 
to  dwell  in  and  possess  your  soul,  as  you  dwell 
in  mine,  and  there  will  be  a  pleasant  union  and 
peace  between  us. 


io8        A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

To  resist,  to  argue  the  matter  like  some  mis- 
erable metaphysician  would  have  been  use- 
less. 

The  persistent  image  was  of  the  old  deep  road, 
the  green  bank  on  each  side,  on  which  stood 
thatched  cottages,  whitewashed  or  of  the  pale 
red  of  old  weathered  bricks;  each  with  its  plot 
of  ground  or  garden  with,  in  some  cases,  a  few 
fruit  trees.  Here  and  there  stood  a  large  shade 
tree — oak  or  pine  or  yew;  then  a  vacant  space, 
succeeded  by  a  hedge,  gapped  and  ragged  and 
bare,  or  of  evergreen  holly  or  yew,  smoothly 
trimmed;  then  a  ploughed  field,  and  again  cot- 
tages, looking  up  or  down  the  road,  or  placed 
obliquely,  or  facing  it:  and  looking  at  one  cot- 
tage and  its  surrounding,  there  would  perhaps 
be  a  water-butt  standing  beside  it;  a  spade  and 
fork  leaning  against  the  wall;  a  white  cat  sitting 
in  the  shelter  idly  regarding  three  or  four  fowls 
moving  about  at  a  distance  of  a  few  yards,  their 
red  feathers  ruffled  by  the  wind;  further  away 
a  wood-pile;  behind  it  a  pigsty  sheltered  by 
bushes,  and  on  the  ground,  among  the  dead 
weeds,  a  chopping-block,  some  broken  bricks, 
little  heaps  of  rusty  iron,  and  other  litter.  Each 


A  WILTSHIRE  VILLAGE  109 

plot  had  its  own  litter  and  objects  and  ani- 
mals. 

On  the  steeply  sloping  sides  of  the  road  the 
young  grass  was  springing  up  everywhere 
among  the  old  rubbish  of  dead  grass  and  leaves 
and  sticks  and  stems.  More  conspicuous  than 
the  grass  blades,  green  as  verdigris,  were  the 
arrow-shaped  leaves  of  the  arum  or  cuckoo-pint. 
But  there  were  no  flowers  yet  except  the  wild 
strawberry,  and  these  so  few  and  small  that  only 
the  eager  eyes  of  the  little  children,  seeking  for 
spring,  might  find  them. 

Nor  was  the  village  less  attractive  in  its 
sounds  than  in  the  natural  pleasing  disorder  of 
its  aspect  and  the  sheltering  warmth  of  its  street. 
In  the  fields  and  by  the  skimpy  hedges  perfect 
silence  reigned;  only  the  wind  blowing  in  your 
face  filled  your  ears  with  a  rushing  aerial  sound 
like  that  which  lives  in  a  seashell.  Coming  back 
from  this  open  bleak  silent  world,  the  village 
street  seemed  vocal  with  bird  voices.  For  the 
birds,  too,  loved  the  shelter  which  had  enabled 
them  to  live  through  that  great  frost;  and  they 
were  now  recovering  their  voices;  and  whenever 
the  wind  lulled  and  a  gleam  of  sunshine  fell 


I  io        A  TRAVELLER   IN   LITTLE  THINGS 

from  the  grey  sky,  they  were  singing  from  end 
to  end  of  the  long  street. 

Listening  to,  and  in  some  instances  seeing  the 
singers  and  counting  them,  I  found  that  there 
were  two  thrushes,  four  blackbirds,  several 
chaffinches  and  green  finches,  one  pair  of  gold- 
finches, half-a-  dozen  linnets  and  three  or  four 
yellow-hammers;  a  sprinkling  of  hedge-spar- 
rows, robins  and  wrens  all  along  the  street;  and 
finally,  one  skylark  from  a  field  close  by  would 
rise  and  sing  at  a  considerable  height  directly 
above  the  road.  Gazing  up  at  the  lark  and  put- 
ting myself  in  his  place,  the  village  beneath 
with  its  one  long  street  appeared  as  a  vari-col- 
oured  band  lying  across  the  pale  earth.  There 
were  dark  and  bright  spots,  lines  and  streaks, 
of  yew  and  holly,  red  or  white  cottage  walls  and 
pale  yellow  thatch;  and  the  plots  and  gardens 
were  like  large  reticulated  mottlings.  Each  had 
its  centre  of  human  life  with  life  of  bird  and 
beast,  and  the  centres  were  in  touch  with  one 
another,  connected  like  a  row  of  children  linked 
together  by  their  hands;  all  together  forming 
one  organism,  instinct  with  one  life,  moved  by 


A  WILTSHIRE  VILLAGE  in 

one  mind,  like  a  many-coloured  serpent  lying  at 
rest,  extended  at  full  length  upon  the  ground. 

I  imagined  the  case  of  a  cottager  at  one  end 
of  the  village  occupied  in  chopping  up  a  tough 
piece  of  wood  or  stump  and  accidentally  letting 
fall  his  heavy  sharp  axe  on  to  his  foot,  inflicting 
a  grievous  wound.  The  tidings  of  the  accident 
would  fly  from  mouth  to  mouth  to  the  other  ex- 
tremity of  the  village,  a  mile  distant;  not  only 
would  every  individual  quickly  know  of  it,  but 
have  at  the  same  time  a  vivid  mental  image  of 
his  fellow  villager  at  the  moment  of  his  misad- 
venture, the  sharp  glittering  axe  falling  on  to 
his  foot,  the  red  blood  flowing  from  the  wound ; 
and  he  would  at  the  same  time  feel  the  wound 
in  his  own  foot,  and  the  shock  to  his  system. 

In  like  manner  all  thoughts  and  feelings 
would  pass  freely  from  one  to  another,  although 
not  necessarily  communicated  by  speech;  and 
all  would  be  participants  in  virtue  of  that  sym- 
pathy and  solidarity  uniting  the  members  of  a 
small  isolated  community.  No  one  would  be 
capable  of  a  thought  or  emotion  which  would 
seem  strange  to  the  others. 


H2       A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

The  temper,  the  mood,  the  outlook,  of  the  in- 
dividual and  the  village  would  be  the  same. 

I  remember  that  something  once  occurred  in 
a  village  where  I  was  staying,  which  was  in  a 
way  important  to  the  villagers,  although  it  gave 
them  nothing  and  took  nothing  from  them:  it 
excited  them  without  being  a  question  of  poli- 
tics, or  of  "morality,"  to  use  the  word  in  its  nar- 
row popular  sense.  I  spoke  first  to  a  woman 
of  the  village  about  it,  and  was  not  a  little  sur- 
prised at  the  view  she  took  of  the  matter,  for  to 
me  this  seemed  unreasonable;  but  I  soon  found 
that  all  the  villagers  took  this  same  unreasonable 
view,  their  indignation,  pity  and  other  emotions 
excited  being  all  expended  as  it  seemed  to  me  in 
the  wrong  direction.  The  woman  had,  in  fact, 
merely  spoken  the  mind  of  the  village. 

Owing  to  this  close  intimacy  and  family  char- 
acter of  the  village  which  continues  from  gen- 
eration to  generation,  there  must  be  under  all 
differences  on  the  surface  a  close  mental  likeness 
hardly  to  be  realised  by  those  who  live  in  popu- 
lous centres;  a  union  between  mind  and  mind 
corresponding  to  that  reticulation  as  it  appeared 
to  me,  of  plot  with  plot  and  with  all  they  con- 


A  WILTSHIRE  VILLAGE  113 

tained.  It  is  perhaps  equally  hard  to  realise  that 
this  one  mind  of  a  particular  village  is  individ- 
ual, wholly  its  own,  unlike  that  of  any  other  vil- 
lage, near  or  far.  For  one  village  differs  from 
another;  and  the  village  is  in  a  sense  a  body,  and 
this  body  and  the  mind  that  inhabits  it,  act  and 
react  on  one  another,  and  there  is  between  them 
a  correspondence  and  harmony,  although  it  may 
be  but  a  rude  harmony. 

It  is  probable  that  we  that  are  country  born 
and  bred  are  affected  in  more  ways  and  more 
profoundly  than  we  know  by  our  surroundings. 
The  nature  of  the  soil  we  live  on,  the  absence 
or  presence  of  running  water,  of  hills,  rocks, 
woods,  open  spaces;  every  feature  in  the  land- 
scape, the  vegetative  and  animal  life — every- 
thing in  fact  that  we  see,  hear,  smell  and  feel, 
enters  not  into  the  body  only,  but  the  soul,  and 
helps  to  shape  and  colour  it.  Equally  important 
in  its  action  on  us  are  the  conditions  created  by 
man  himself: — situation,  size,  form  and  the  ar- 
rangements of  the  houses  in  the  village;  its  tra- 
ditions, customs  and  social  life. 

On  that  airy  mirador  which  I  occupied  under 
(not  in)  the  clouds,  after  surveying  the  village 


ii4       A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

beneath  me  I  turned  my  sight  abroad  and  saw, 
near  and  far,  many  many  other  villages;  and 
there  was  no  other  exactly  like  Burbage  nor  any 
two  really  alike. 

Each  had  its  individual  character.  To  men- 
tion only  two  that  were  nearest — East  Grafton 
and  Easton,  or  Easton  Royal.  The  first,  small 
ancient  rustic-looking  place:  a  large  green, 
park-like  shaded  by  well-grown  oak,  elm, 
beech,  and  ash  trees;  a  small  slow  stream  of 
water  winding  through  it:  round  this  pleasant 
shaded  and  watered  space  the  low-roofed 
thatched  cottages,  each  cottage  in  its  own  gar- 
den, its  porch  and  walls  overgrown  with  ivy  and 
creepers.  Thus,  instead  of  a  straight  line  like 
Burbage  it  formed  a  circle,  and  every  cottage 
opened  on  to  the  tree-shaded  village  green;  and 
this  green  was  like  a  great  common  room  where 
the  villagers  meet,  where  the  children  play, 
where  lovers  whisper  their  secrets,  where  the 
aged  and  weary  take  their  rest,  and  all  subjects 
of  interest  are  daily  discussed.  If  a  blackcap 
or  chaffinch  sung  in  one  of  the  trees  the  strain 
could  be  heard  in  every  cottage  in  the  circle. 


A  WILTSHIRE  VILLAGE  115 

All  hear  and  see  the  same  things,  and  think  and 
feel  the  same. 

The  neighbouring  village  was  neither  line, 
nor  circle,  but  a  cluster  of  cottages.  Or  rather 
a  group  of  clusters,  so  placed  that  a  dozen  or 
more  housewives  could  stand  at  their  respective 
doors,  very  nearly  facing  one  another,  and  con- 
fabulate without  greatly  raising  their  voices. 
Outside,  all  round,  the  wide  open  country — 
grass  and  tilled  land  and  hedges  and  hedgerow 
elms — is  spread  out  before  them.  And  in  sight 
of  all  the  cottages,  rising  a  little  above  them, 
stands  the  hoary  ancient  church  with  giant  old 
elm-trees  growing  near  it,  their  branches  laden 
with  rooks'  nests,  the  air  full  of  the  continuous 
noise  of  the  wrangling  birds,  as  they  fly  round 
and  round,  and  go  and  come  bringing  sticks  all 
day,  one  to  add  to  the  high  airy  city,  the  other  to 
drop  as  an  offering  to  the  earth-god  beneath,  in 
whose  deep-buried  breast  the  old  trees  have 
their  roots. 

But  the  other  villages  that  cannot  be  named 
were  in  scores  and  hundreds,  scattered  all  over 
Wiltshire,  for  the  entire  county  was  visible  from 


n6        A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

that  altitude,  and  not  Wiltshire  only  but  Somer- 
set, and  Berkshire  and  Hampshire,  and  all  the 
adjoining  counties,  and  finally,  the  prospect  still 
widening,  all  England  from  rocky  Land's  End 
to  the  Cheviots  and  the  wide  windy  moors 
sprinkled  over  with  grey  stone  villages.  Thou- 
sands and  thousands  of  villages;  but  I  could  only 
see  a  few  distinctly — not  more  than  about  two 
hundred,  the  others  from  their  great  distance- 
not  in  space  but  time — appearing  but  vaguely 
as  spots  of  colour  on  the  earth.  Then,  fixing 
my  attention  on  those  that  were  most  clearly 
seen,  I  found  myself  in  thought  loitering  in 
them,  revisiting  cottages  and  conversing  with 
old  people  and  children  I  knew;  and  recalling 
old  and  remembered  scenes  and  talks,  I  smiled 
and  by-and-by  burst  out  laughing. 

It  was  then,  when  I  laughed,  that  visions, 
dreams,  memories,  were  put  to  flight,  for  my 
wise  sister  was  studying  my  face,  and  now,  put- 
ting her  hand  on  mine,  she  said,  "Listen!"  And 
I  listened,  sadly,  since  I  could  guess  what  was 
coming. 

"I  know,"  she  said,  "just  what  is  at  the  back 
of  your  mind,  and  all  these  innumerable  vil- 


A  WILTSHIRE  VILLAGE  117 

lages  you  are  amusing  yourself  by  revisiting,  is 
but  a  beginning,  a  preliminary  canter.  For  not 
only  is  it  the  idea  of  the  village  and  the  mental 
colour  in  which  it  dyes  its  children's  mind 
which  fades  never,  however  far  they  may  go, 
though  it  may  be  to  die  at  last  in  remote  lands 

and  seas " 

Here  I  interrupted,  "O  yes!  Do  you  remem- 
ber a  poet's  lines  to  the  little  bourne  in  his  child- 
hood's home?  A  poet  in  that  land  where  poetry 
is  a  rare  plant — I  mean  Scotland.  I  mean  the 
lines : 

How  men  that  niver  have  kenned  aboot  it 
Can  lieve  their  after  lives  withoot  it 
I  canna  tell,  for  day  and  nicht 
It  comes  unca'd  for  to  my  sicht. 

"Yes,"  she  replied,  smiling  sadly,  and  then, 
mocking  my  bad  Scotch,  "and  do  ye  ken  that 
ither  one,  a  native  too  of  that  country  where,  as 
you  say,  poetry  is  a  rare  plant;  that  great  wan- 
derer over  many  lands  and  seas,  seeker  after 
summer  everlasting,  who  died  thousands  of 
miles  from  home  in  a  tropical  island,  and  was 
borne  to  his  grave  on  a  mountain  top  by  the 
dark-skinned  barbarous  islanders,  weeping  and 


n8        A   TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

lamenting  their  dead  Tusitala,  and  the  lines  he 
wrote — do  you  remember? 

Be  it  granted  to  me  to  behold  you  again  in  dying, 
Hills  of  my  home!  and  to  hear  again  the  call — 

Hear  about  the  graves  of  the  martyrs,  the  pee-wees  crying, 
And  hear  no  more  at  all ! 

"Oh,  I  was  foolish  to  quote  those  lines  on  a 
Scotch  burn  to  you,  knowing  how  you  would 
take  such  a  thing  up !  For  you  are  the  very  soul 
of  sadness — a  sadness  that  is  like  a  cruelty — and 
for  all  your  love,  my  sister,  you  would  have 
killed  me  with  your  sadness  had  I  not  refused 
to  listen  so  many  many  times!" 

"No!  No!  No!  Listen  now  to  what  I  had  to 
say  without  interrupting  me  again:  All  this 
about  the  villages,  viewed  from  up  there  where 
the  lark  sings,  is  but  a  preliminary — a  little  play 
to  deceive  yourself  and  me.  For,  all  the  time 
you  are  thinking  of  other  things,  serious  and 
some  exceedingly  sad — of  those  who  live  not  in 
villages  but  in  dreadful  cities,  who  are  like 
motherless  men  who  have  never  known  a 
mother's  love  and  have  never  had  a  home  on 
earth.  And  you  are  like  one  who  has  come 
upon  a  cornfield,  ripe  for  the  harvest  with  you 


A  WILTSHIRE  VILLAGE  119 

alone  to  reap  it.  And  viewing  it  you  pluck  an 
ear  of  corn,  and  rub  the  grains  out  in  the  palm 
of  your  hand,  and  toss  them  up,  laughing  and 
playing  with  them  like  a  child,  pretending  you 
are  thinking  of  nothing,  yet  all  the  time  think- 
ing— thinking  of  the  task  before  you.  And  pres- 
ently you  will  take  to  the  reaping  and  reap  until 
the  sun  goes  down,  to  begin  again  at  sunrise  to 
toil  and  sweat  again  until  evening.  Then,  lift- 
ing your  bent  body  with  pain  and  difficulty,  you 
will  look  to  see  how  little  you  have  done,  and 
that  the  field  has  widened  and  now  stretches 
away  before  you  to  the  far  horizon.  And  in 
despair  you  will  cast  the  sickle  away  and 
abandon  the  task." 

"What  then,  O  wise  sister,  would  you  have 
me  do?" 

"Leave  it  now,  and  save  yourself  this  fresh 
disaster  and  suffering;." 

"So  be  it!  I  cannot  but  remember  that  there 
have  been  many  disasters — more  than  can  be 
counted  on  the  fingers  of  my  two  hands — which 
I  would  have  saved  myself  if  I  had  listened 
when  I  turned  a  deaf  ear  to  you.  But  tell  me, 
do  you  mind  just  a  little  more  innocent  play  on 


120       A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

my  part — just  a  little  picture  of,  say,  one  of  the 
villages  viewed  a  while  ago  from  under  the 
cloud — or  perhaps  two?" 

And  Psyche,  my  sister,  having  won  her  point 
and  pacified  me,  and  conquered  my  scruples  and 
gloom,  and  seeing  me  now  submissive,  smiled  a 
gracious  consent. 


XIII 
HER  OWN  VILLAGE 

ONE  afternoon  when  cycling  among  the 
limestone  hills  of  Derbyshire  I  came  to  an 
unlovely  dreary-looking  little  village  named 
Chilmorton.  It  was  an  exceptionally  hot  June 
day  and  I  was  consumed  with  thirst:  never  had 
I  wanted  tea  so  badly.  Small  gritstone-built 
houses  and  cottages  of  a  somewhat  sordid  aspect 
stood  on  either  side  of  the  street,  but  there  was 
no  shop  of  any  kind  and  not  a  living  creature 
could  I  see.  It  was  like  a  village  of  the  dead 
or  sleeping.  At  the  top  of  the  street  I  came  to 
the  church  standing  in  the  middle  of  its  church- 
yard with  the  public-house  for  nearest  neigh- 
bour. Here  there  was  life.  Going  in  I  found 
it  the  most  squalid  and  evil-smelling  village  pub 
I  had  ever  entered.  Half  a  dozen  grimy-looking 
labourers  were  drinking  at  the  bar,  and  the 
landlord  was  like  them  in  appearance,  with  his 
dirty  shirt-front  open  to  give  his  patrons  a  view 

121 


122       A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

of  his  hairy  sweating  chest.  I  asked  him  to  get 
me  tea.  "Tea!"  he  shouted,  staring  at  me  as  if  I 
had  insulted  him;  "There's  no  tea  here!"  A 
little  frightened  at  his  aggressive  manner  I  then 
meekly  asked  for  soda-water,  which  he  gave  me, 
and  it  was  warm  and  tasted  like  a  decoction  of 
mouldy  straw.  After  taking  a  sip  and  paying 
for  it  I  went  to  look  at  the  church,  which  I  was 
astonished  to  find  open. 

It  was  a  relief  to  be  in  that  cool,  twilight,  not 
unbeautiful  interior  after  my  day  in  the  burning 
sun. 

After  resting  and  taking  a  look  round  I  be- 
came interested  in  watching  and  listening  to  the 
talk  of  two  other  visitors  who  had  come  in  be- 
fore me.  One  was  a  slim,  rather  lean  brown- 
skinned  woman,  still  young  but  with  the  in- 
cipient crow's-feet,  the  lines  on  the  forehead, 
the  dusty-looking  dark  hair,  and  other  signs  of 
time  and  toil  which  almost  invariably  appear  in 
the  country  labourer's  wife  before  she  attains  to 
middle  age.  She  was  dressed  in  a  black  gown, 
presumably  her  best  although  it  was  getting  a 
little  rusty.  Her  companion  was  a  fat,  red- 
cheeked  young  girl  in  a  towny  costume,  a  straw 


HER  OWN  VILLAGE  123 

hat  decorated  with  bright  flowers  and  ribbons, 
and  a  string  of  big  coloured  beads  about  her 
neck. 

In  a  few  minutes  they  went  out,  and  when 
going  by  me  I  had  a  good  look  at  the  woman's 
face,  for  it  was  turned  towards  me  with  an  eager 
questioning  look  in  her  dark  eyes  and  a  very 
friendly  smile  on  her  lips.  What  was  the  attrac- 
tion I  suddenly  found  in  that  sunburnt  face? — 
what  did  it  say  to  me  or  remind  me  of? — what 
did  it  suggest? 

I  followed  them  out  to  where  they  were  stand- 
ing talking  among  the  gravestones,  and  sitting 
down  on  a  tomb  near  them  spoke  to  the  woman. 
She  responded  readily  enough,  apparently 
pleased  to  have  some  one  to  talk  to,  and  pretty 
soon  began  to  tell  me  the  history  of  their  lives. 
She  told  me  that  Chilmorton  was  her  native 
place,  but  that  she  had  been  absent  from  it  many 
many  years.  She  knew  just  how  many  years  be- 
cause her  child  was  only  six  months  old  when 
she  left  and  was  now  fourteen  though  she  looked 
more.  She  was  such  a  big  girl!  Then  her  man 
took  them  to  his  native  place  in  Staffordshire, 
where  they  had  lived  ever  since.  But  their  girl 


124       A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

didn't  live  with  them  now.  An  aunt,  a  sister  of 
her  husband,  had  taken  her  to  the  town  where 
she  lived,  and  was  having  her  taught  at  a  private 
school.  As  soon  as  she  left  school  her  aunt 
hoped  to  get  her  a  place  in  a  draper's  shop.  For 
a  long  time  past  she  had  wanted  to  show  her 
daughter  her  native  place,  but  had  never  been 
able  to  manage  it  because  it  was  so  far  to  come 
and  they  didn't  have  much  money  to  spend;  but 
now  at  last  she  had  brought  her  and  was  showing 
her  everything. 

Glancing  at  the  girl  who  stood  listening  but 
with  no  sign  of  interest  in  her  face,  I  remarked 
that  her  daughter  would  perhaps  hardly  think 
the  journey  had  been  worth  taking. 

"Why  do  you  say  that?"  she  quickly  de- 
manded. 

"Oh  well,"  I  replied,  "because  Chilmorton 
can't  have  much  to  interest  a  girl  living  in  a 
town."  Then  I  foolishly  went  on  to  say  what 
I  thought  of  Chilmorton.  The  musty  taste  of 
that  warm  soda-water  was  still  in  my  mouth  and 
made  me  use  some  pretty  strong  words. 

At  that  she  flared  up  and  desired  me  to  know 
that  in  spite  of  what  I  thought  it  Chilmorton 


HER  OWN  VILLAGE  125 

was  the  sweetest,  dearest  village  in  England; 
that  she  was  born  there  and  hoped  to  be  buried 
in  its  churchyard  where  her  parents  were  lying, 
and  her  grandparents  and  many  others  of  her 
family.  She  was  thirty-six  years  old  now,  she 
said,  and  would  perhaps  live  to  be  an  old 
woman,  but  it  would  make  her  miserable  for  all 
the  rest  of  her  life  if  she  thought  she  would 
have  to  lie  in  the  earth  at  a  distance  from  Chil- 
morton. 

During  this  speech  I  began  to  think  of  the 
soft  reply  it  would  now  be  necessary  for  me  to 
make,  when,  having  finished  speaking,  she  called 
sharply  to  her  daughter,  "Come,  we've  others 
to  see  yet,"  and,  followed  by  the  girl,  walked 
briskly  away  without  so  much  as  a  good-bye,  or 
even  a  glance! 

Oh  you  poor  foolish  woman,  thought  I;  why 
take  it  to  heart  like  that!  and  I  was  sorry  and 
laughed  a  little  as  I  went  back  down  the  street. 

It  was  beginning  to  wake  up  now!  A  man  in 
his  shirt  sleeves  and  without  a  hat,  a  big  angry 
man,  was  furiously  hunting  a  rebellious  pig  all 
round  a  small  field  adjoining  a  cottage,  trying 
to  corner  it;  he  swore  and  shouted,  and  out  of 


126        A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

the  cottage  came  a  frowsy-looking  girl  in  a 
ragged  gown  with  her  hair  hanging  all  over  her 
face,  to  help  him  with  the  pig.  A  little  further 
on  I  caught  sight  of  yet  another  human  being, 
a  tall  gaunt  old  woman  in  cap  and  shawl,  who 
came  out  of  a  cottage  and  moved  feebly  towards 
a  pile  of  faggots  a  few  yards  from  the  door. 
Just  as  she  got  to  the  pile  I  passed,  and  she 
slowly  turned  and  gazed  at  me  out  of  her  dim 
old  eyes.  Her  wrinkled  face  was  the  colour  of 
ashes  and  was  like  the  face  of  a  corpse,  still 
bearing  on  it  the  marks  of  suffering  endured 
for  many  miserable  years.  And  these  three  were 
the  only  inhabitants  I  saw  on  my  way  down  the 
street. 

At  the  end  of  the  village  the  street  broadened 
to  a  clean  white  road  with  high  ancient  hedge- 
row elms  on  either  side,  their  upper  branches 
meeting  and  forming  a  green  canopy  over  it.  As 
soon  as  I  got  to  the  trees  I  stopped  and  dis- 
mounted to  enjoy  the  delightful  sensation  the 
shade  produced:  there  out  of  its  power  I  could 
best  appreciate  the  sun  shining  in  splendour  on 
the  wide  green  hilly  earth  and  in  the  green 
translucent  foliage  above  my  head.  In  the 


HER  OWN  VILLAGE  127 

upper  branches  a  blackbird  was  trolling  out  his 
music  in  his  usual  careless  leisurely  manner; 
when  I  stopped  under  it  the  singing  was  sus- 
pended for  half  a  minute  or  so,  then  resumed, 
but  in  a  lower  key,  which  made  it  seem  softer, 
sweeter,  inexpressibly  beautiful. 

There  are  beautiful  moments  in  our  converse 
with  nature  when  all  the  avenues  by  which  na- 
ture comes  to  our  souls  seem  one,  when  hearing 
and  seeing  and  smelling  and  feeling  are  one 
sense,  when  the  sweet  sound  that  falls  from  a 
bird,  is  but  the  blue  of  heaven,  the  green  of 
earth,  and  the  golden  sunshine  made  audible. 

Such  a  moment  was  mine,  as  I  stood  under  the 
elms  listening  to  the  blackbird.  And  looking 
back  up  the  village  street  I  thought  of  the 
woman  in  the  churchyard,  her  sun-parched 
eager  face,  her  questioning  eyes  and  friendly 
smile:  what  was  the  secret  of  its  attraction? — 
what  did  that  face  say  to  me  or  remind  me  of? 
—what  did  it  suggest? 

Now  it  was  plain  enough.  She  was  still  a 
child  at  heart,  in  spite  of  those  marks  of  time 
and  toil  on  her  countenance,  still  full  of  wonder 
and  delight  at  this  wonderful  world  of  Chilmor- 


i28       A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

ton  set  amidst  its  limestone  hills,  under  the  wide 
blue  sky — this  poor  squalid  little  village  where 
I  couldn't  get  a  cup  of  tea! 

It  was  the  child  surviving  in  her  which  had 
attracted  and  puzzled  me;  it  does  not  often  shine 
through  the  dulling  veil  of  years  so  brightly. 
And  as  she  now  appeared  to  me  as  a  child  in 
heart  I  could  picture  her  as  a  child  in  years,  in 
her  little  cotton  frock  and  thin  bare  legs,  a -sun- 
burnt little  girl  of  eight,  with  the  wide-eyed, 
eager,  half-shy,  half-trustful  look,  asking  you,  as 
the  child  ever  asks,  what  you  think? — what  you 
feel?  It  was  a  wonderful  world,  and  the  world 
was  the  village,  its  streets  of  gritstone  houses,  the 
people  living  in  them,  the  comedies  and  trage- 
dies of  their  lives  and  deaths,  and  burials  in  the 
churchyard  with  grass  and  flowers  to  grow  over 
them  by-and-by.  And  the  church; — I  think  its 
interior  must  have  seemed  vaster,  more  beauti- 
ful and  sublime  to  her  wondering  little  soul  than 
the  greatest  cathedral  can  be  to  us.  I  think  that 
our  admiration  for  the  loveliest  blooms — the 
orchids  and  roses  and  chrysanthemums  at  our 
great  annual  shows — is  a  poor  languid  feeling 
compared  to  what  she  experienced  at  the  sight 


HER  OWN  VILLAGE  129 

of  any  common  flower  of  the  field.  Best  of  all 
perhaps  were  the  elms  at  the  village  end,  those 
mighty  rough-barked  trees  that  had  their  tops 
"so  close  against  the  sky."  And  I  think  that 
when  a  blackbird  chanced  to  sing  in  the  upper 
branches  it  was  as  if  some  angelic  being  had 
dropped  down  out  of  the  sky  into  that  green 
translucent  cloud  of  leaves,  and  seeing  the 
child's  eager  face  looking  up  had  sung  a  little 
song  of  his  own  celestial  country  to  please  her. 


XIV 

APPLE  BLOSSOMS  AND  A  LOST 
VILLAGE 

THE  apple  has  not  come  to  its  perfection 
this  season  until  the  middle  of  May;  even 
here,  in  this  west  country,  the  very  home  of  the 
spirit  of  the  apple  tree!  Now  it  is,  or  seems,  all 
the  more  beautiful  because  of  its  lateness,  and 
of  an  April  of  snow  and  sleet  and  east  winds,  the 
bitter  feeling  of  which  is  hardly  yet  out  of  our 
blood.  If  I  could  recover  the  images  of  all  the 
flowering  apple  trees  I  have  ever  looked  de- 
lightedly at,  adding  those  pictured  by  poets  and 
painters,  including  that  one  beneath  which 
Fiammetta  is  standing,  forever,  with  that  fresh 
glad  face  almost  too  beautiful  for  earth,  looking 
out  as  from  pink  and  white  clouds  of  the  multi- 
tudinous blossoms — if  I  could  see  all  that,  I 
could  not  find  a  match  for  one  of  the  trees  of 
to-day.  It  is  like  nothing  in  earth,  unless  we 
say  that,  indescribable  in  its  loveliness,  it  is  like 

130 


APPLE   BLOSSOMS  AND   A  LOST  VILLAGE    131 

all  other  sights  in  nature  which  wake  in  us  a 
sense  of  the  supernatural. 

Undoubtedly  the  apple  trees  seem  more  beau- 
tiful to  us  than  all  other  blossoming  trees,  in  all 
lands  we  have  visited,  just  because  it  is  so  com- 
mon, so  universal — I  mean  in  this  west  country 
— so  familiar  a  sight  to  everyone  from  infancy, 
on  which  account  it  has  more  associations  of  a 
tender  and  beautiful  kind  than  the  others.  For 
however  beautiful  it  may  be  intrinsically,  the 
greatest  share  of  the  charm  is  due  to  the  mem- 
ories that  have  come  to  be  part  of  and  one  with 
it — the  forgotten  memories  they  may  be  called. 
For  they  mostly  refer  to  a  far  period  in  our 
lives,  to  our  early  years,  to  days  and  events  that 
were  happy  and  sad.  The  events  themselves 
have  faded  from  the  mind,  but  they  registered 
an  emotion,  cumulative  in  its  effect,  which  en- 
dures and  revives  from  time  to  time  and  is  that 
indefinable  feeling,  that  tender  melancholy  and 
"divine  despair,"  and  those  idle  tears  of  which 
the  poet  says,  "I  know  not  what  they  mean," 
which  gather  to  the  eyes  at  the  sight  of  happy 
autumn  fields  and  of  all  lovely  natural  sights 
familiar  from  of  old. 


132       A  TRAVELLER  IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

To-day,  however,  looking  at  the  apple  blooms, 
I  find  the  most  beautifying  associations  and 
memories  not  in  a  far-off  past,  but  in  visionary 
apple  trees  seen  no  longer  ago  than  last  autumn ! 

And  this  is  how  it  comes  about.  In  this  red 
and  green  country  of  Devon  I  am  apt  to  meet 
with  adventures  quite  unlike  those  experienced 
in  other  counties,  only  they  are  mostly  adven- 
tures of  the  spirit. 

Lying  awake  at  six  o'clock  last  October,  in 
Exeter,  and  seeing  it  was  a  grey  misty  morning, 
my  inclination  was  to  sleep  again.  I  only  dozed 
and  was  in  the  twilight  condition  when  the  mind 
is  occupied  with  idle  images  and  is  now  in  the 
waking  world,  now  in  dreamland.  A  thought 
of  the  rivers  in  the  red  and  green  country  floated 
through  my  brain — of  the  Clyst  among  others; 
then  of  the  villages  on  the  Clyst;  of  Broadclyst, 
Clyst  St.  Mary,  Clyst  St.  Lawrence,  finally  of 
Clyst  Hyden;  and  although  dozing  I  half 
laughed  to  remember  how  I  went  searching  for 
that  same  village  last  May  and  how  I  wouldn't 
ask  my  way  of  anyone,  just  because  it  was  Clyst 
Hyden,  because  the  name  of  that  little  hidden 
rustic  village  had  been  written  in  the  hearts  of 


APPLE   BLOSSOMS  AND   A  LOST  VILLAGE     133 

some  who  had  passed  away  long  ago,  far  far 
from  home: — how  then  could  I  fail  to  find  it? — 
it  would  draw  my  feet  like  a  magnet! 

I  remembered  how  I  searched  among  deep 
lanes,  beyond  rows  and  rows  of  ancient  hedge- 
row elms,  and  how  I  found  its  little  church  and 
thatched  cottages  at  last,  covered  with  ivy  and 
roses  and  creepers,  all  in  a  white  and  pink  cloud 
of  apple  blossoms.  Searching  for  it  had  been 
great  fun  and  finding  it  a  delightful  experi- 
ence; why  not  have  the  pleasure  once  more  now 
that  it  was  May  again  and  the  apple  orchards  in 
blossom?  No  sooner  had  I  asked  myself  the 
question  than  I  was  on  my  bicycle  among  those 
same  deep  lanes,  with  the  unkept  hedges  and 
the  great  hedgerow  elms  shutting  out  a  view  of 
the  country,  searching  once  more  for  the  village 
of  Clyst  Hyden.  And  as  on  the  former  occasion, 
years  ago  it  seemed,  I  would  not  enquire  my 
way  of  anyone.  I  had  found  it  then  for  myself 
and  was  determined  to  do  so  again,  although  I 
had  set  out  with  the  vaguest  idea  as  to  the  right 
direction. 

But  hours  went  by  and  I  could  not  find  it,  and 
now  it  was  growing  late.  Through  a  gap  in  the 


134        A   TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

hedge  I  saw  the  great  red  globe  of  the  sun  quite 
near  the  horizon,  and  immediately  after  seeing 
it  I  was  in  a  narrow  road  with  a  green  border, 
which  stretched  away  straight  before  me  fur- 
ther than  I  could  see.  Then  the  thatched  cot- 
tages of  a  village  came  into  sight;  all  were  on 
one  side  of  the  road,  and  the  setting  sun  flamed 
through  the  trees  had  kindled  road  and  trees 
and  cottages  to  a  shining  golden  flame. 

"This  is  it!"  I  cried.  "This  is  my  little  lost 
village  found  again,  and  it  is  well  I  found  it 
so  late  in  the  day,  for  now  it  looks  less  like  even 
the  loveliest  old  village  in  Devon  than  one  in 
fairyland,  or  in  Beulah." 

When  I  came  near  it  that  sunset  splendour 
did  not  pass  off  and  it  was  indeed  like  no  earthly 
village;  then  people  came  out  from  the  houses 
to  gaze  at  me,  and  they  too  were  like  people 
glorified  with  the  sunset  light  and  their  faces 
shone  as  they  advanced  hurriedly  to  meet  me, 
pointing  with  their  hands  and  talking  and  laugh- 
ing  excitedly  as  if  my  arrival  among  them  had 
been  an  event  of  great  importance.  In  a  mo- 
ment they  surrounded  and  crowded  round  me, 
and  sitting  still  among  them  looking  from  ra- 


APPLE   BLOSSOMS  AND  A  LOST  VILLAGE    135 

diant  face  to  face  I  at  length  found  my  speech 
and  exclaimed,  "O  how  beautiful!" 

Then  a  girl  pressed  forward  from  among  the 
others,  and  putting  up  her  hand  she  placed  it  on 
my  temple,  the  fingers  resting  on  my  forehead; 
and  gazing  with  a  strange  earnestness  in  my  eyes 
she  said:  "Beautiful? — only  that  I  Do  you  see 
nothing  more?" 

I  answered,  looking  back  into  her  eyes :  "Yes 
— I  think  there  is  something  more  but  I  don't 
know  what  it  is.  Does  it  come  from  you — your 
eyes — your  voice,  all  this  that  is  passing  in  my 
mind?" 

"What  is  passing  in  your  mind?"  she  asked. 

"I  don't  know.  Thoughts — perhaps  mem- 
ories: hundreds,  thousands — they  come  and  go 
like  lightning  so  that  I  can't  arrest  them — not 
even  one!" 

She  laughed,  and  the  laugh  was  like  her  eyes 
and  her  voice  and  the  touch  of  her  hand  on  my 
temples. 

Was  it  sad  or  glad?  I  don't  know,  but  it  was 
the  most  beautiful  sound  I  had  ever  heard,  yet 
it  seemed  familiar  and  stirred  me  in  the 
strangest  way. 


136        A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

"Let  me  think,"  I  said. 

"Yes,  think!"  they  all  together  cried  laugh- 
ingly; and  then  instantly  when  I  cast  my  eyes 
down  there  was  a  perfect  stillness  as  if  they 
were  all  holding  their  breath  and  watching  me. 

That  sudden  strange  stillness  startled  me:  I 
lifted  my  eyes  and  they  were  gone — the  radiant 
beautiful  people  who  had  surrounded  and  inter- 
rogated me,  and  with  them  their  shining  golden 
village,  had  all  vanished.  There  was  no  village, 
no  deep  green  lanes  and  pink  and  white  clouds 
of  apple  blossoms,  and  it  was  not  May,  it  was 
late  October  and  I  was  lying  in  bed  in  Exeter 
seeing  through  the  window  the  red  and  grey 
roofs  and  chimneys  and  pale  misty  white  sky. 


XV 
THE  VANISHING  CURTSEY 

S  impossible  not  to  regret  the  dying  out  of 
the  ancient,  quaintly-pretty  custom  of 
curtseying  in  rural  England;  yet  we  cannot  but 
see  the  inevitableness  of  it,  when  we  consider 
the  earthward  drop  of  the  body — the  bird-like 
gesture  pretty  to  see  in  the  cottage  child,  not  so 
spontaneous  nor  pretty  in  the  grown  girl,  and 
not  pretty  nor  quaint,  but  rather  grotesque  (as 
we  think  now)  in  the  middle-aged  or  elderly 
person — and  that  there  is  no  longer  a  corre- 
sponding self-abasement  and  worshipping  atti- 
tude in  the  village  mind.  It  is  a  sign  or  symbol 
that  has  lost,  or  is  losing,  its  significance. 

I  have  been  rambling  among  a  group  of 
pretty  villages  on  and  near  the  Somerset  Avon, 
some  in  that  county,  others  in  Wiltshire;  and 
though  these  small  rustic  centres,  hidden  among 
the  wooded  hills,  had  an  appearance  of  anti- 

137 


138        A  TRAVELLER   IN   LITTLE   THINGS 

quity  and  of  having  continued  unchanged  for 
very  many  years,  the  little  ones  were  as  modern 
in  their  speech  and  behaviour  as  town  children. 
Of  all  those  I  met  and,  in  many  instances,  spoke 
to,  in  the  village  street  and  in  the  neighbouring 
woods  and  lanes,  not  one  little  girl  curtseyed  to 
me.  The  only  curtsey  I  had  dropped  to  me  in 
this  district  was  from  an  old  woman  in  the  small 
hill-hidden  village  of  Englishcombe.  It  was  on 
a  frosty  afternoon  in  February,  and  she  stood 
near  her  cottage  gate  with  nothing  on  her  head, 
looking  at  the  same  time  very  old  and  very 
young.  Her  eyes  were  as  blue  and  bright  as  a 
child's,  and  her  cheeks  were  rosy- red;  but  the 
skin  was  puckered  with  innumerable  wrinkles 
as  in  the  very  old.  Surprised  at  her  curtsey  I 
stopped  to  speak  to  her,  and  finally  went  into  her 
cottage  and  had  tea  and  made  the  acquaintance 
of  her  husband,  a  gaunt  old  man  with  a  face 
grey  as  ashes  and  dim  colourless  eyes,  whom 
Time  had  made  almost  an  imbecile,  and  who  sat 
all  day  groaning  by  the  fire.  Yet  this  worn-out 
old  working  man  was  her  junior  by  several 
years.  Her  age  was  eighty-four.  She  was  very 
good  company,  certainly  the  brightest  and  live- 


THE  VANISHING  CURTSEY  139 

liest  of  the  dozen  or  twenty  octogenarians  I  am 
acquainted  with.  I  heard  the  story  of  her  life, — 
that  long  life  in  the  village  where  she  was  born 
and  had  spent  sixty-five  years  of  married  life, 
and  where  she  would  lie  in  the  churchyard  with 
her  mate.  Her  Christian  name,  she  mentioned, 
was  Priscilla,  and  it  struck  me  that  she  must 
have  been  a  very  pretty  and  charming  Priscilla 
about  the  thirties  of  the  last  century. 

To  return  to  the  little  ones;  it  was  too  near 
Bath  for  such  a  custom  to  survive  among  them, 
and  it  is  the  same  pretty  well  everywhere;  you 
must  go  to  a  distance  of  ten  or  twenty  miles 
from  any  large  town,  or  a  big  station,  to  meet 
with  curtseying  children.  Even  in  villages  at  a 
distance  from  towns  and  railroads,  in  purely 
agricultural  districts,  the  custom  is  dying  out,  if, 
for  some  reason,  strangers  are  often  seen  in  the 
place.  Such  a  village  is  Selborne,  and  an  amus- 
ing experience  I  met  with  there  some  time  ago 
serves  to  show  that  the  old  rustic  simplicity  of 
its  inhabitants  is  now  undergoing  a  change. 

I  was  walking  in  the  village  street  with  a  lady 
friend  when  we  noticed  four  little  girls  coming 
towards  us  with  arms  linked.  As  they  came  near 


I4o        A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

they  suddenly  stopped  and  curtseyed  all  to- 
gether in  an  exaggerated  manner,  dropping  till 
their  knees  touched  the  ground,  then  springing  to 
their  feet  they  walked  rapidly  away.  From  the 
bold,  free,  easy  way  in  which  the  thing  was  done 
it  was  plain  to  see  that  they  had  been  practising 
the  art  in  something  of  a  histrionic  spirit  for  the 
benefit  of  the  pilgrims  and  strangers  frequently 
seen  in  the  village,  and  for  their  own  amuse- 
ment. As  the  little  Selbornians  walked  off  they 
glanced  back  at  us  over  their  shoulders,  exhibit- 
ing four  roguish  smiles  on  their  four  faces.  The 
incident  greatly  amused  us,  but  I  am  not  sure 
that  the  Reverend  Gilbert  White  would  have  re- 
garded it  in  the  same  humorous  light. 

Occasionally  one  even  finds  a  village  where 
strangers  are  not  often  seen,  which  has  yet  out- 
lived the  curtsey.  Such  a  place,  I  take  it,  is 
Alvediston,  the  small  downland  village  on  the 
upper  waters  of  the  Ebble,  in  southern  Wilt- 
shire. One  day  last  summer  I  was  loitering  near 
the  churchyard,  when  a  little  girl,  aged  about 
eight,  came  from  an  adjoining  copse  with  some 
wild  flowers  in  her  hand.  She  was  singing  as 
she  walked  and  looked  admiringly  at  the  flowers 


THE  VANISHING  CURTSEY  141 

she  carried;  but  she  could  see  me  watching  her 
out  of  the  corners  of  her  eyes. 

"Good  morning,"  said  I.  "It  is  nice  to  be  out 
gathering  flowers  on  such  a  day,  but  why  are 
you  not  in  school?" 

"Why  am  I  not  in  school?"  in  a  tone  of  sur- 
prise. "Because  the  holidays  are  not  over.  On 
Monday  we  open." 

"How  delighted  you  will  be." 

"Oh  no,  I  don't  think  I  shall  be  delighted," 
she  returned.  Then  I  asked  her  for  a  flower, 
and  apparently  much  amused  she  presented  me 
with  a  water  forget-me-not,  then  she  sauntered 
on  to  a  small  cottage  close  by.  Arrived  there, 
she  turned  round  and  faced  me,  her  hand  on  the 
gate,  and  after  gazing  steadily  for  some  mo- 
ments exclaimed,  "Delighted  at  going  back  to 
school — who  ever  heard  such  a  thing?"  and, 
bursting  into  a  peal  of  musical  child-laughter, 
she  went  into  the  cottage. 

One  would  look  for  curtseys  in  the  Flower 
Walk  in  Kensington  Gardens  as  soon  as  in  the 
hamlet  of  this  remarkably  self-possessed  little 
maid.  Her  manner  was  exceptional;  but,  if  we 
must  lose  the  curtsey,  and  the  rural  little  ones 


I42        A   TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

cease  to  mimic  that  pretty  drooping  motion  of 
the  nightingale,  the  kitty  wren,  and  wheatear, 
cannot  our  village  pastors  and  masters  teach 
them  some  less  startling  and  offensive  form  of 
salutation  than  the  loud  "Hullo!"  with  which 
they  are  accustomed  to  greet  the  stranger  within 
their  gates? 

I  shall  finish  with  another  story  which  might 
be  entitled  "The  Democrat  against  Curtseying." 
The  scene  was  a  rustic  village,  a  good  many 
miles  from  any  railroad  station,  in  the  south  of 
England.  Here  I  made  the  acquaintance  and 
was  much  in  the  society  of  a  man  who  was  not 
a  native  of  the  place,  but  had  lived  several  years 
in  it.  Although  only  a  working  man,  he  had,  by 
sheer  force  of  character,  made  himself  a  power 
in  the  village.  A  total  abstainer  and  non- 
smoker,  a  Dissenter  in  religion  and  lay-preacher 
where  Dissent  had  never  found  a  foothold  until 
his  coming,  and  an  extreme  Radical  in  politics, 
he  was  naturally  something  of  a  thorn  in  the  side 
of  the  vicar  and  of  the  neighbouring  gentry. 

But  in  spite  of  his  extreme  views  and  opposi- 
tion to  old  cherished  ideas  and  conventions,  he 
was  so  liberal-minded,  so  genial  in  temper,  so 


THE  VANISHING  CURTSEY  143 

human,  that  he  was  very  much  liked  even  by 
those  who  were  his  enemies  on  principle;  and 
they  were  occasionally  glad  to  have  his  help  and 
to  work  with  him  in  any  matter  that  concerned 
the  welfare  of  the  very  poor  in  the  village. 

After  the  first  bitterness  between  him  and  the 
important  inhabitants  had  been  outlived  and  a 
modus  vivendi  established,  the  vicar  ventured 
one  day  to  remonstrate  with  the  good  but  mis- 
taken man  on  the  subject  of  curtseying,  which 
had  always  been  strictly  observed  in  the  village. 
The  complaint  was  that  the  parishioner's  wife 
did  not  curtsey  to  the  vicaress,  but  on  the  con- 
trary, when  she  met  or  passed  her  on  the  road 
she  maintained  an  exceedingly  stiff,  erect  atti- 
tude, which  was  not  right,  and  far  from  pleasant 
to  the  other. 

"Is  it  then  your  desire,"  said  my  democratic 
friend,  "that  my  wife  shall  curtsey  to  your  wife 
when  they  meet  or  pass  each  other  in  the  vil- 
lage?" 

"Certainly,  that  is  my  wish,"  said  the  vicar. 

"Very  well,"  said  the  other;  "my  wife  is 
guided  by  me  in  such  matters,  and  I  am  very 
happy  to  say  that  she  is  an  obedient  wife,  and  I 


144        A   TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

shall  tell  her  that  she  is  to  curtsey  to  your  wife 
in  future." 

"Thank  you,"  said  the  vicar,  "I  am  glad  that 
you  have  taken  it  in  a  proper  spirit." 

"But  I  have  not  yet  finished,"  said  the  other. 
"I  was  going  to  add  that  this  command  to  my 
wife  to  curtsey  to  your  wife  will  be  made  by 
me  on  the  understanding  that  you  will  give  a 
similar  command  to  your  wife,  and  that  when 
they  meet  and  my  wife  curtseys  to  your  wife, 
your  wife  shall  at  the  same  time  curtsey  to  my 
wife." 

The  vicar  was  naturally  put  out  and  sharply 
told  his  rebellious  parishioner  that  he  was  set- 
ting himself  against  the  spirit  of  the  teaching  of 
the  Master  whom  they  both  acknowledged,  and 
who  commanded  us  to  give  to  everyone  his  due, 
with  more  to  the  same  effect.  But  he  failed  to 
convince,  and  there  was  no  curtseying. 

It  was  sometimes  pleasant  and  amusing  to  see 
these  two — the  good  old  clergyman,  weak  and 
simple-minded,  and  his  strong  antagonist,  the 
aggressive  working  man  with  his  large  frame 
and  genial  countenance  and  great  white  flowing 
beard — a  Walt  Whitman  in  appearance — work- 


THE  VANISHING  CURTSEY  145 

ing  together  for  some  good  object  in  the  village. 
It  was  even  more  amusing,  but  touching  as 
well,  to  witness  an  unexpected  meeting  between 
the  two  wives,  perhaps  at  the  door  of  some  poor 
cottage,  to  which  both  had  gone  on  the  same 
beautiful  errand  of  love  and  compassion  to  some 
stricken  soul,  and  exchanging  only  a  short 
"Good-day,"  the  democrat's  wife  stiffening  her 
knee-joints  so  as  to  look  straighter  and  taller 
than  usual. 


XVI 
LITTLE  GIRLS  I  HAVE  MET 

PERHAPS  some  reader  who  does  not  know  a 
little  girl  her  psychology,  after  that  ac- 
count of  the  Alvediston  maidie  who  presented 
me  with  a  flower  with  an  arch  expression  on 
her  face  just  bordering  on  a  mocking  smile,  will 
say,  "What  a  sophisticated  child  to  be  sure!" 
He  would  be  quite  wrong  unless  we  can  say  that 
the  female  child  is  born  sophisticated,  which 
sounds  rather  like  a  contradiction  in  terms.  That 
appearance  of  sophistication,  common  in  little 
girls  even  in  a  remote  rustic  village  hidden  away 
among  the  Wiltshire  downs,  is  implicit  in,  and 
a  quality  of  the  child's  mind — the  female  child, 
it  will  be  understood — and  is  the  first  sign  of  the 
flirting  instinct  which  shows  itself  as  early  as 
the  maternal  one.  This,  we  know,  appears  as 
soon  as  a  child  is  able  to  stand  on  its  feet,  per- 
haps even  before  it  quits  the  cradle.  It  seeks  to 
gratify  itself  by  mothering  something,  even  an 

146 


LITTLE  GIRLS  I  HAVE  MET  147 

inanimate  something,  so  that  it  is  as  common  to 
put  a  doll  in  a  baby-child's  hands  as  it  is  to  put 
a  polished  cylindrical  bit  of  ivory — I  forget  the 
name  of  it — in  its  mouth.  The  child  grows  up 
nursing  this  image  of  itself,  whether  with  or 
without  a  wax  face,  blue  eyes  and  tow-coloured 
hair,  and  if  or  when  the  unreality  of  the  doll  be- 
gins to  spoil  its  pleasure,  it  will  start  mothering 
something  with  life  in  it — a  kitten  for  prefer- 
ence, and  if  no  kitten,  or  puppy  or  other  such 
creature  easy  to  be  handled  or  cuddled,  is  at 
hand,  it  will  take  kindly  to  any  mild-mannered 
old  gentleman  of  its  circle. 

It  is  just  these  first  instinctive  impulses  of  the 
girl-child,  combined  with  her  imitativeness  and 
wonderful  precocity,  which  make  her  so  fascin- 
ating. But  do  they  think?  They  do,  but  this 
first  early  thinking  does  not  make  them  self- 
conscious  as  does  their  later  thinking,  to  the 
spoiling  of  their  charm.  The  thinking  indeed 
begins  remarkably  early.  I  remember  one  child, 
a  little  five-year-old  and  one  of  my  favourites, 
climbing  to  my  knee  one  day  and  exhibiting  a 
strangely  grave  face.  "Doris,  what  makes  you 
look  so  serious?"  I  asked.  And  after  a  few  mo- 


148       A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

ments  of  silence,  during  which  she  appeared  to 
be  thinking  hard,  she  startled  me  by  asking  me 
what  was  the  use  of  living,  and  other  questions 
which  it  almost  frightened  me  to  hear  from 
those  childish  innocent  lips.  Yet  I  have  seen 
this  child  grow  up  to  womanhood — a  quite  com- 
monplace conventional  woman,  who  when  she 
has  a  child  of  her  own  of  five  would  be  unspeak- 
ably shocked  to  hear  from  it  the  very  things  she 
herself  spoke  at  that  tender  age.  And  if  I  were 
to  repeat  to  her  now  the  words  she  spoke  (the 
very  thought  of  Byron  in  his  know-that-what- 
ever -  thou  -  hast  -  been  -  'Twere  -  something  - 
better-not-to-be  poem)  she  would  not  believe  it. 

It  is,  however,  rare  for  the  child  mind  in  its 
first  essays  at  reflection  to  take  so  far  a  flight.  It 
begins  as  a  rule  like  the  fledgling  by  climbing 
with  difficulty  out  of  the  nest  and  on  to  the  near- 
est branches. 

It  is  interesting  to  observe  these  first  move- 
ments. Quite  recently  I  met  with  a  child  of 
about  the  same  age  as  the  one  just  described, 
who  exhibited  herself  to  me  in  the  very  act  of 
trying  to  climb  out  of  the  nest — trying  to  grasp 
something  with  her  claws,  so  to  speak,  and  pull 


LITTLE   GIRLS  I  HAVE  MET  149 

herself  up.  She  was  and  is  a  very  beautiful 
child,  full  of  life  and  fun  and  laughter,  and 
came  out  to  me  when  I  was  sitting  on  the  lawn 
to  ask  me  for  a  story. 

"Very  well,"  I  said.  "But  you  must  wait  for 
half  an  hour  until  I  remember  all  about  it  before 
I  begin.  It  is  a  long  story  about  things  that 
happened  a  long  time  ago." 

She  waited  as  patiently  as  she  could  for  about 
three  minutes,  and  then  said:  "What  do  you 
mean  by  a  long  time  ago?" 

I  explained,  but  could  see  that  I  had  not  made 
her  understand,  and  at  last  put  it  in  days,  then 
weeks,  then  seasons,  then  years,  until  she  ap- 
peared to  grasp  the  meaning  of  a  year,  and  then 
finished  by  saying  a  long  time  ago  in  this  case 
meant  a  hundred  years. 

Again  she  was  at  a  loss,  but  still  trying  to 
understand  she  asked  me:  "What  is  a  hundred 
years?" 

"Why,  it's  a  hundred  years,"  I  replied.  "Can 
you  count  to  a  hundred?" 

"I'll  try,"  she  said,  and  began  to  count  and  got 
to  nineteen,  then  stopped.  I  prompted  her,  and 
she  went  on  to  twenty-nine,  and  so  on,  hesitating 


ISO       A  TRAVELLER   IN   LITTLE   THINGS 

after  each  nine,  until  she  reached  fifty.  "That's 
enough,"  I  said,  "it's  too  hard  to  go  the  whole 
way;  but  now  don't  you  begin  to  understand 
what  a  hundred  years  means?" 

She  looked  at  me  and  then  away,  and  her 
beautiful  blue  intelligent  eyes  told  me  plainly 
that  she  did  not,  and  that  she  felt  baffled  and 
worried. 

After  an  interval  she  pointed  to  the  hedge. 
"Look  at  the  leaves,"  she  said.  "I  could  go  and 
count  a  hundred  leaves,  couldn't  I?  Well,  would 
that  be  a  hundred  years?" 

And  no  further  could  we  get,  since  I  could  not 
make  out  just  what  the  question  meant.  At  first 
it  looked  as  if  she  thought  of  the  leaves  as  an 
illustration — or  a  symbol;  and  then  that  she  had 
failed  to  grasp  the  idea  of  time,  or  that  it  had 
slipped  from  her,  and  she  had  fallen  back,  as 
it  were,  to  the  notion  that  a  hundred  meant  a 
hundred  objects,  which  you  could  see  and  feel. 
There  appeared  to  be  no  way  out  of  the  puzzle- 
dom  into  which  we  had  both  got,  so  that  it  came 
as  a  relief  to  both  of  us  when  she  heard  her 
mother  calling — calling  her  back  into  a  world 
she  could  understand. 


LITTLE  GIRLS  I  HAVE  MET  151 

I  believe  that  when  we  penetrate  to  the  real 
mind  of  girl  children  we  find  a  strong  likeness 
in  them  even  when  they  appear  to  differ  as 
widely  from  one  another  as  adults  do.  The  dif- 
ference in  the  little  ones  is  less  in  disposition  and 
character  than  in  unlikeness  due  to  unconscious 
imitation.  They  take  their  mental  colour  from 
their  surroundings.  The  red  men  of  America 
are  the  gravest  people  on  the  globe,  and  their 
children  are  like  them  when  with  them;  but 
this  unnatural  gravity  is  on  the  surface  and  is  a 
mask  which  drops  or  fades  off  when  they  as- 
semble together  out  of  sight  and  hearing  of  their 
elders.  In  like  manner  our  little  ones  have 
masks  to  fit  the  character  of  the  homes  they  are 
bred  in. 

Here  I  recall  a  little  girl  I  once  met  when  I 
was  walking  somewhere  on  the  borders  of  Dor- 
set and  Hampshire.  It  was  at  the  close  of  an 
autumn  day,  and  I  was  on  a  broad  road  in  a  level 
stretch  of  country  with  the  low  buildings  of  a 
farmhouse  a  quarter  of  a  mile  ahead  of  me,  and 
no  other  building  in  sight.  A  lonely  land  with 
but  one  living  creature  in  sight — a  very  small 
girl,  slowly  coming  towards  me,  walking  in  the 


152       A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

middle  of  the  wet  road;  for  it  had  been  raining 
a  greater  part  of  the  day.  It  was  amazing  to 
see  that  wee  solitary  being  on  the  lonely  road, 
with  the  wide  green  and  brown  earth  spreading 
away  to  the  horizon  on  either  side  under  the 
wide  pale  sky.  She  was  a  sturdy  little  thing  of 
about  five  years  old,  in  heavy  clothes  and  cloth 
cap,  and  long  knitted  muffler  wrapped  round 
her  neck  and  crossed  on  her  chest,  then  tied  or 
bound  round  her  waist,  thick  boots  and  thick 
leggings!  And  she  had  a  round  serious  face, 
and  big  blue  eyes  with  as  much  wonder  in  them 
at  seeing  me  as  I  suppose  mine  expressed  at  see- 
ing her.  When  we  were  still  a  little  distance 
apart  she  drew  away  to  the  opposite  side  of  the 
road,  thinking  perhaps  that  so  big  a  man  would 
require  the  whole  of  its  twenty-five  yards  width 
for  himself.  But  no,  that  was  not  the  reason  of 
her  action,  for  on  gaining  the  other  side  she 
stopped  and  turned  so  as  to  face  me  when  I 
should  be  abreast  of  her,  and  then  at  the  proper 
moment  she  bent  her  little  knees  and  dropped 
me  an  elaborate  curtsey;  then,  rising  again  to 
her  natural  height,  she  continued  regarding  me 
with  those  wide-open  astonished  eyes ! 


LITTLE  GIRLS  I  HAVE  MET  153 

Nothing  in  little  girls  so  deliciously  quaint 
and  old-worldish  had  ever  come  in  my  way  be- 
fore; and  though  it  was  late  in  the  day  and  the 
road  long,  I  could  not  do  less  than  cross  over  to 
speak  to  her.  She  belonged  to  a  cottage  I  had 
left  some  distance  behind,  and  had  been  to  the 
farm  with  a  message  and  was  on  her  way  back, 
she  told  me,  speaking  with  slow  deliberation  and 
profound  respect,  as  to  a  being  of  a  higher 
order  than  man.  Then  she  took  my  little  gift 
and  after  making  a  second  careful  curtsey  pro- 
ceeded slowly  and  gravely  on  her  way. 

Undoubtedly  all  this  unsmiling,  deeply  re- 
spectful manner  was  a  mask,  or  we  may  go  so 
far  as  to  call  it  second  nature,  and  was  the  result 
of  living  in  a  cottage  in  an  agricultural  district 
with  adults  or  old  people : — probably  her  grand- 
mother was  the  poor  little  darling's  model,  and 
any  big  important-looking  man  she  met  was  the 
lord  of  the  manor! 

What  an  amazing  difference  outwardly  be- 
tween the  rustic  and  the  city  child  of  a  society 
woman,  accustomed  to  be  addressed  and  joked 
with  and  caressed  by  scores  of  persons  every  day 
— her  own  people,  friends,  visitors,  strangers! 


154       A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

Such  a  child  I  met  last  summer  at  a  west-end 
shop  or  emporium  where  women  congregate  in 
a  colossal  tea-room  under  a  glass  dome,  with 
glass  doors  opening  upon  an  acre  of  flat 
roof. 

There,  one  afternoon,  after  drinking  my  tea  I 
walked  away  to  a  good  distance  on  the  roof  and 
sat  down  to  smoke  a  cigarette,  and  presently  saw 
a  charming-looking  child  come  dancing  out 
from  among  the  tea-drinkers.  Round  and  round 
she  whirled,  heedless  of  the  presence  of  all  those 
people,  happy  and  free  and  wild  as  a  lamb  run- 
ning a  race  with  itself  on  some  green  flowery 
down  under  the  wide  sky.  And  by-and-by  she 
came  near  and  was  pirouetting  round  my  chair, 
when  I  spoke  to  her,  and  congratulated  her  on 
having  had  a  nice  holiday  at  the  seaside.  One 
knew  it  from  her  bare  brown  legs.  Oh  yes,  she 
said,  it  was  a  nice  holiday  at  Bognor,  and  she 
had  enjoyed  it  very  much. 

"Particularly  the  paddling,"  I  remarked. 

No,  there  was  no  paddling — her  mother 
wouldn't  let  her  paddle. 

"What  a  cruel  mother!"  I  said,  and  she 
laughed  merrily,  and  we  talked  a  little  longer, 


LITTLE  GIRLS  I  HAVE  MET  155 

and  then  seeing  her  about  to  go,  I  said,  "you 
must  be  just  seven  years  old." 

"No,  only  five,"  she  replied. 

"Then,"  said  I,  "you  must  be  a  wonderfully 
clever  child." 

"Oh  yes,  I  know  I'm  clever,"  she  returned 
quite  naturally,  and  away  she  went,  spinning 
over  the  wide  space,  and  was  presently  lost  in 
the  crowd. 

A  few  minutes  later  a  pleasant-looking  but 
dignified  lady  came  out  from  among  the  tea- 
drinkers  and  bore  down  directly  on  me.  "I 
hear,"  she  said,  "you've  been  talking  to  my  little 
girl,  and  I  want  you  to  know  I  was  very  sorry 
I  couldn't  let  her  paddle.  She  was  just  recov- 
ering from  whooping-cough  when  I  took  her  to 
the  seaside,  and  I  was  afraid  to  let  her  go  in  the 
water." 

I  commended  her  for  her  prudence,  and  apol- 
ogised for  having  called  her  cruel,  and  after  a 
few  remarks  about  her  charming  child,  she  went 
her  way. 

And  now  I  have  no  sooner  done  with  this 
little  girl  than  another  cometh  up  as  a  flower 
in  my  memory  and  I  find  I'm  compelled  to 


156       A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

break  off.  There  are  too  many  for  me.  It  is 
true  that  the  child's  beautiful  life  is  a  brief  one, 
like  that  of  the  angel-insect,  and  may  be  told  in 
a  paragraph;  yet  if  I  were  to  write  only  as  many 
of  them  as  there  are  "Lives"  in  Plutarch  it 
would  still  take  an  entire  book — an  octavo  of  at 
least  three  hundred  pages.  But  though  I  can't 
write  the  book  I  shall  not  leave  the  subject  just 
yet,  and  so  will  make  a  pause  here,  to  continue 
the  subject  in  the  next  sketch,  then  the  next  to 
follow,  and  probably  the  next  after  that. 


XVII 
MILLICENT  AND  ANOTHER 

THEY  were  two  quite  small  maidies,  aged 
respectively  four  and  six  years  with  some 
odd  months  in  each  case.  They  are  older  now 
and  have  probably  forgotten  the  stranger  to 
whom  they  gave  their  fresh  little  hearts,  who 
presently  left  their  country  never  to  return;  for 
all  this  happened  a  long  time  ago — I  think 
about  three  years.  In  a  way  they  were  rivals, 
yet  had  never  seen  one  another,  perhaps  never 
will,  since  they  inhabit  two  villages  more  than 
a  dozen  miles  apart  in  a  wild,  desolate,  hilly 
district  of  West  Cornwall. 

Let  me  first  speak  of  Millicent,  the  elder.  I 
knew  Millicent  well,  having  at  various  times 
spent  several  weeks  with  her  in  her  parents' 
house,  and  she,  an  only  child,  was  naturally  re- 
garded as  the  most  important  person  in  it.  In 
Cornwall  it  is  always  so.  Tall  for  her  years, 
straight  and  slim,  with  no  red  colour  on  her 

'57 


iS8        A   TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

cheeks;  she  had  brown  hair  and  large  serious 
grey  eyes;  those  eyes  and  her  general  air  of 
gravity,  and  her  forehead,  which  was  too  broad 
for  perfect  beauty,  made  me  a  little  shy  of  her 
and  we  were  not  too  intimate.  And,  indeed,  that 
feeling  on  my  part,  which  made  me  a  little  care- 
ful and  ceremonious  in  our  intercourse,  seemed 
to  be  only  what  she  expected  of  me.  One  day 
in  a  forgetful  or  expansive  moment  I  happened 
to  call  her  "Millie,"  which  caused  her  to  look 
to  me  in  surprise.  "Don't  you  like  me  to  call 
you  Millie — for  short?"  I  questioned  apologet- 
ically. "No,"  she  returned  gravely;  "it  is  not 
my  name — my  name  is  Millicent."  And  so  it 
had  to  be  to  the  end  of  the  chapter. 

Then  there  was  her  speech — I  wondered  how 
she  got  it!  For  it  was  unlike  that  of  the  people 
she  lived  among  of  her  own  class.  No  word- 
clipping  and  slurring,  no  "naughty  English"  as 
old  Nordin  called  it,  and  sing-song  intonation 
with  her!  She  spoke  with  an  almost  startling 
distinctness,  giving  every  syllable  its  proper 
value,  and  her  words  were  as  if  they  had  been 
read  out  of  a  nicely  written  book. 

Nevertheless,  we  got  on  fairly  well  together, 


MILLICENT  AND  ANOTHER  159 

meeting  on  most  days  at  tea-time  in  the  kitchen, 
when  we  would  have  nice  sober  little  talks  and 
look  at  her  lessons  and  books  and  pictures,  some- 
times unbending  so  far  as  to  draw  pigs  on  her 
slate  with  our  eyes  shut,  and  laughing  at  the  re- 
sult just  like  ordinary  persons. 

It  was  during  my  last  visit,  after  an  absence 
of  some  months  from  that  part  of  the  country, 
that  one  evening  on  coming  in  I  was  told  by  her 
mother  that  Millicent  had  gone  for  the  milk, 
and  that  I  would  have  to  wait  for  my  tea  till 
she  came  back.  Now  the  farm  that  supplied 
the  milk  was  away  at  the  other  end  of  the  vil- 
lage, quite  half  a  mile,  and  I  went  to  meet  her, 
but  did  not  see  her  until  I  had  walked  the  whole 
distance,  when  just  as  I  arrived  at  the  gate  she 
came  out  of  the  farm-house  burdened  with  a 
basket  of  things  in  one  hand  and  a  can  of  milk 
in  the  other.  She  graciously  allowed  me  to  re- 
lieve her  of  both,  and  taking  basket  and  can  with 
one  hand  I  gave  her  the  other,  and  so,  hand  in 
hand,  very  friendly,  we  set  off  down  the  long, 
bleak,  windy  road  just  when  it  was  growing 
dark. 

"I'm  afraid  you  are  rather  thinly  clad  for  this 


160        A   TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

bleak  December  evening,"  I  remarked.  "Your 
little  hand  feels  cold  as  ice." 

She  smiled  sweetly  and  said  she  was  not  feel- 
ing cold,  after  which  there  was  a  long  interval  of 
silence.  From  time  to  time  we  met  a  villager, 
a  fisherman  in  his  ponderous  sea-boots,  or  a 
farm-labourer  homeward  plodding  his  weary 
way.  But  though  heavy-footed  after  his  day's 
labour  he  is  never  so  stolid  as  an  English 
ploughman  is  apt  to  be;  invariably  when  giving 
us  a  good-night  in  passing  the  man  would  smile 
and  look  at  Millicent  very  directly  with  a 
meaning  twinkle  in  his  Cornish  eye.  He  might 
have  been  congratulating  her  on  having  a  male 
companion  to  pay  her  all  these  nice  little  atten- 
tions, and  perhaps  signalling  the  hope  that 
something  would  come  of  it. 

Grave  little  Millicent,  I  was  pleased  to  ob- 
serve, took  no  notice  of  this  Cornubian  foolish- 
ness. At  length  when  we  had  walked  half  the 
distance  home,  in  perfect  silence,  she  said  im- 
pressively: "Mr.  Hudson,  I  have  something  I 
want  to  tell  you  very  much." 

I  begged  her  to  speak,  pressing  her  cold  little 
hand. 


MlLLICENT  AND  ANOTHER  161 

She  proceeded:  "I  shall  never  forget  that 
morning  when  you  went  away  the  last  time.  You 
said  you  were  going  to  Truro;  but  I'm  not  sure 
—perhaps  it  was  to  London.  I  only  know  that 
it  was  very  far  away,  and  you  were  going  for  a 
very  long  time.  It  was  early  in  the  morning, 
and  I  was  in  bed.  You  know  how  late  I  always 
am.  I  heard  you  calling  to  me  to  come  down 
and  say  good-bye;  so  I  jumped  up  and  came 
down  in  my  nightdress  and  saw  you  standing 
waiting  for  me  at  the  foot  of  the  stairs.  Then, 
when  I  got  down,  you  took  me  up  in  your  arms 
and  kissed  me.  I  shall  never  forget  it!" 

"Why?"  I  said,  rather  lamely,  just  because  it 
was  necessary  to  say  something.  And  after  a 
little  pause,  she  returned,  "Because  I  shall  never 
forget  it." 

Then,  as  I  said  nothing,  she  resumed :  "That 
day  after  school  I  saw  Uncle  Charlie  and  told 
him,  and  he  said:  What!  you  allowed  that 
tramp  to  kiss  you!  then  I  don't  want  to  take  you 
on  my  knee  any  more — you've  lowered  yourself 
too  much.'' ' 

"Did  he  dare  to  say  that?"  I  returned. 

"Yes,  that's  what  Uncle  Charlie  said,  but  it 


162        A   TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

makes  no  difference.  I  told  him  you  were  not  a 
tramp,  Mr.  Hudson,  and  he  said  you  could  call 
yourself  Mister-what-you-liked  but  you  were  a 
tramp  all  the  same,  nothing  but  a  common 
tramp,  and  that  I  ought  to  be  ashamed  of  my- 
self. 'You've  disgraced  the  family,'  that's  what 
he  said,  but  I  don't  care — I  shall  never  forget 
it,  the  morning  you  went  away  and  took  me  up 
in  your  arms  and  kissed  me." 

Here  was  a  revelation!  It  saddened  me,  and 
I  made  no  reply  although  I  think  she  expected 
one.  And  so  after  a  minute  or  two  of  uncom- 
fortable silence  she  repeated  that  she  would 
never  forget  it.  For  all  the  time  I  was  thinking 
of  another  and  sweeter  one  who  was  also  a  per- 
son of  importance  in  her  own  home  and  village 
over  a  dozen  miles  away. 

In  thoughtful  silence  we  finished  our  talk; 
then  there  were  lights  and  tea  and  general  con- 
versation; and  if  Millicent  had  intended  return- 
ing to  the  subject  she  found  no  opportunity  then 
or  afterwards. 

It  was  better  so,  seeing  that  the  other  charac- 
ter possessed  my  whole  heart. 


MILLICENT  AND  ANOTHER  163 

She  was  not  intellectual;  no  one  would  have 
said  of  her,  for  example,  that  she  would  one  day 
blossom  into  a  second  Emily  Bronte;  that  to 
future  generations  her  wild  moorland  village 
would  be  the  Haworth  of  the  West.  She  was 
perhaps  something  better — a  child  of  earth  and 
sun,  exquisite,  with  her  flossy  hair  a  shining 
chestnut  gold,  her  eyes  like  the  bugloss,  her 
whole  face  like  a  flower  or  rather  like  a  ripe 
peach  in  bloom  and  colour;  we  are  apt  to  asso- 
ciate these  delicious  little  being  with  flavours  as 
well  as  fragrances.  But  I  am  not  going  to  be  so 
foolish  as  to  attempt  to  describe  her. 

Our  first  meeting  was  at  the  village  spring, 
where  the  women  came  with  pails  and  pitchers 
for  water;  she  came,  and  sitting  on  the  stone  rim 
of  the  basin  into  which  the  water  gushed,  re- 
garded me  smilingly,  with  questioning  eyes.  I 
started  a  conversation,  but  though  smiling  she 
was  shy.  Luckily  I  had  my  luncheon,  which 
consisted  of  fruit,  in  my  satchel,  and  telling  her 
about  it  she  grew  interested  and  confessed  to  me 
that  of  all  good  things  fruit  was  what  she  loved 
best.  I  then  opened  my  stores,  and  selecting  the 


i64        A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

brightest  yellow  and  richest  purple  fruits,  told 
her  that  they  were  for  her — on  one  condition- 
that  she  would  love  me  and  give  me  a  kiss.  And 
she  consented  and  came  to  me.  O  that  kiss!  And 
what  more  can  I  find  to  say  of  it?  Why  noth- 
ing, unless  one  of  the  poets,  Crawshaw  for  pref- 
erence, can  tell  me.  "My  song,"  I  might  say 
with  that  mystic,  after  an  angel  had  kissed  him 
in  the  morning, 

Tasted  of  that  breakfast  all  day  long. 

From  that  time  we  got  on  swimmingly,  and 
were  much  in  company,  for  soon,  just  to  be  near 
her,  I  went  to  stay  at  her  village.  I  then  made 
the  discovery  that  Mab,  for  that  is  what  they 
called  her,  although  so  unlike,  so  much  softer 
and  sweeter  than  Millicent,  was  yet  like  her  in 
being  a  child  of  character  and  of  an  indomitable 
will.  She  never  cried,  never  argued,  or  listened 
to  arguments,  never  demonstrated  after  the 
fashion  of  wilful  children  generally,  by  throw- 
ing herself  down  screaming  and  kicking;  she 
simply  very  gently  insisted  on  having  her  own 
way  and  living  her  own  life.  In  the  end  she 
always  got  it,  and  the  beautiful  thing  was  that 


MILLICENT  AND  ANOTHER  165 

she  never  wanted  to  be  naughty  or  do  anything 
really  wrong!  She  took  a  quite  wonderful  in- 
terest in  the  life  of  the  little  community,  and 
would  always  be  where  others  were,  especially 
when  any  gathering  took  place.  Thus,  long  be- 
fore I  knew  her  at  the  age  of  four,  she  made  the 
discovery  that  the  village  children,  or  most  of 
them,  passed  much  of  their  time  in  school,  and 
to  school  she  accordingly  resolved  to  go.  Her 
parents  opposed,  and  talked  seriously  to  her  and 
used  force  to  restrain  her,  but  she  overcame 
them  in  the  end,  and  to  the  school  they  had  to 
take  her,  where  she  was  refused  admission  on 
account  of  her  tender  years.  But  she  had  re- 
solved to  go,  and  go  she  would;  she  laid  siege 
to  the  schoolmistress,  to  the  vicar,  who  told  me 
how  day  after  day  she  would  come  to  the  door 
of  the  vicarage,  and  the  parlour-maid  would 
come  rushing  into  his  study  to  announce,  "Miss 
Mab  to  speak  to  you  Sir,"  and  how  he  would 
talk  seriously  to  her,  and  then  tell  her  to  run 
home  to  her  mother  and  be  a  good  child.  But 
it  was  all  in  vain,  and  in  the  end,  because  of  her 
importunity  or  sweetness,  he  had  to  admit  her. 
When  I  went,  during  school  hours,  to  give  a 


i66        A   TRAVELLER   IN   LITTLE   THINGS 

talk  to  the  children,  there  I  found  Mab,  one  of 
the  forty,  sitting  with  her  book,  which  told  her 
nothing,  in  her  little  hands.  She  listened  to  the 
talk  with  an  appearance  of  interest,  although 
understanding  nothing,  her  bugloss  eyes  on  me, 
encouraging  me  with  a  very  sweet  smile,  when- 
ever I  looked  her  way. 

It  was  the  same  about  attending  church.  Her 
parents  went  to  one  service  on  Sundays;  she  in- 
sisted on  going  to  all  three,  and  would  sit  and 
stand  and  kneel,  book  in  hand,  as  if  taking  a  part 
in  it  all,  but  always  when  you  looked  at  her,  her 
eyes  would  meet  yours  and  the  sweet  smile 
would  come  to  her  lips. 

I  had  been  told  by  her  mother  that  Mab 
would  not  have  dolls  and  toys,  and  this  fact, 
recalled  at  an  opportune  moment,  revealed  to 
me  her  secret  mind — her  baby  philosophy.  We, 
the  inhabitants  of  the  village,  grown-ups  and 
children  as  well  as  the  domestic  animals,  were 
her  playmates  and  playthings,  so  that  she  was 
independent  of  sham  blue-eyed  babies  made  of 
sawdust  and  cotton  and  inanimate  fluffy  Teddy- 
bears;  she  was  in  possession  of  the  real  thing! 
The  cottages,  streets,  the  church  and  school,  the 


MILLICENT  AND  ANOTHER  167 

fields  and  rocks  and  hills  and  sea  and  sky  were 
all  contained  in  her  nursery  or  playground;  and 
we,  her  fellow-beings,  were  all  occupied  from 
morn  to  night  in  an  endless  complicated  game, 
which  varied  from  day  to  day  according  to  the 
weather  and  time  of  year,  and  had  many  beauti- 
ful surprises.  She  didn't  understand  it  all,  but 
was  determined  to  be  in  it  and  get  all  the  fun 
she  could  out  of  it.  This  mental  attitude  came 
out  strikingly  one  day  when  we  had  a  funeral — 
always  a  feast  to  the  villagers;  that  is  to  say,  an 
emotional  feast;  and  on  this  occasion  the  cir- 
cumstances made  the  ceremony  a  peculiarly  im- 
pressive one. 

A  young  man,  well  known  and  generally 
liked,  son  of  a  small  farmer,  died  with  tragic 
suddenness,  and  the  little  stone  farm-house  being 
situated  away  on  the  borders  of  the  parish,  the 
funeral  procession  had  a  considerable  distance 
to  walk  to  the  village.  To  the  church  I  went 
to  view  its  approach;  built  on  a  rock,  the  church 
stands  high  in  the  centre  of  the  village,  and 
from  the  broad  stone  steps  in  front  one  got  a 
fine  view  of  the  inland  country  and  of  the  pro- 
cession like  an  immense  black  serpent  winding 


i68        A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

along  over  green  fields  and  stiles,  now  disap- 
pearing in  some  hollow  ground  or  behind  grey 
masses  of  rock,  then  emerging  on  the  sight,  and 
the  voices  of  the  singers  bursting  out  loud  and 
clear  in  that  still  atmosphere. 

When  I  arrived  on  the  steps  Mab  was  already 
there;  the  whole  village  would  be  at  that  spot 
presently,  but  she  was  first.  On  that  morning  no 
sooner  had  she  heard  that  the  funeral  was  going 
to  take  place  than  she  gave  herself  a  holiday 
from  school  and  made  her  docile  mother  dress 
her  in  her  daintiest  clothes.  She  welcomed  me 
with  a  glad  face  and  put  her  wee  hand  in  mine; 
then  the  villagers — all  those  not  in  the  proces- 
sion— began  to  arrive,  and  very  soon  we  were  in 
the  middle  of  a  throng;  then,  as  the  six  coffin- 
bearers  came  slowly  toiling  up  the  many  steps, 
and  the  singing  all  at  once  grew  loud  and  swept 
as  a  big  wave  of  sound  over  us,  the  people  were 
shaken  with  emotion,  and  all  the  faces,  even  of 
the  oldest  men,  were  wet  with  tears — all  except 
ours,  Mab's  and  mine. 

Our  tearless  condition — our  ability  to  keep 
dry  when  it  was  raining,  so  to  say — resulted 
from  quite  different  causes.  Mine  just  then 


MILLICENT  AND  ANOTHER  169 

were  the  eyes  of  a  naturalist  curiously  observing 
the  demeanour  of  the  beings  around  me.  To 
Mab  the  whole  spectacle  was  an  act,  an  inter- 
lude, or  scene  in  that  wonderful  endless  play 
which  was  a  perpetual  delight  to  witness  and  in 
which  she  too  was  taking  a  part.  And  to  see  all 
her  friends,  her  grown-up  playmates,  enjoying 
themselves  in  this  unusual  way,  marching  in  a 
procession  to  the  church,  dressed  in  black,  sing- 
ing hymns  with  tears  in  their  eyes — why,  this 
was  even  better  than  school  or  Sunday  service, 
romps  in  the  playground  or  a  children's  tea. 
Every  time  I  looked  down  at  my  little  mate  she 
lifted  a  rosy  face  to  mine  with  her  sweetest  smile 
and  bugloss  eyes  aglow  with  ineffable  happiness. 
And  now  that  we  are  far  apart  my  loveliest 
memory  of  her  is  as  she  appeared  then.  I  would 
not  spoil  that  lovely  image  by  going  back  to  look 
at  her  again.  Three  years !  It  was  said  of  Lewis 
Carroll  that  he  ceased  to  care  anything  about 

4 

his  little  Alices  when  they  had  come  to  the  age 
of  ten.  Seven  is  my  limit :  they  are  perfect  then : 
but  in  Mab's  case  the  peculiar  exquisite  charm 
could  hardly  have  lasted  beyond  the  age  of  six. 


XVIII 
FRECKLES 

MY  meeting  with  Freckles  only  served  to 
confirm  me  in  the  belief,  almost  amount-, 
ing  to  a  conviction,  that  the  female  of  our  species 
reaches  its  full  mental  development  at  an  extra- 
ordinarily early  age  compared  to  that  of  the 
male.  In  the  male  the  receptive  and  elastic  or 
progressive  period  varies  greatly;  but  judging 
from  the  number  of  cases  one  meets  with  of  men 
who  have  continued  gaining  in  intellectual 
power  to  the  end  of  their  lives,  in  spite  of  phys- 
ical decay,  it  is  reasonable  to  conclude  that  the 
stationary  individuals  are  only  so  because  of  the 
condition  of  their  lives  having  been  inimical. 
In  fact,  stagnation  strikes  us  as  an  unnatural  con- 
dition of  mind.  The  man  who  dies  at  fifty  or 
sixty  or  seventy,  after  progressing  all  his  life, 
doubtless  would,  if  he  had  lived  a  lustrum  or  a 
decade  longer,  have  attained  to  a  still  greater 
height.  "How  disgusting  it  is,"  cried  Ruskin, 

170 


FRECKLES  171 

when  he  had  reached  his  threescore  years  and 
ten,  "to  find  that  just  when  one's  getting  inter- 
ested in  life  one  has  got  to  die!"  Many  can  say 
as  much;  all  could  say  it,  had  not  the  mental 
machinery  been  disorganised  by  some  accident, 
or  become  rusted  from  neglect  and  carelessness. 
He  who  is  no  more  in  mind  at  sixty  than  at  thirty 
is  but  a  half-grown  man :  his  is  a  case  of  arrested 
development. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  remark  here  that  the 
mere  accumulation  of  knowledge  is  not  the  same 
thing  as  power  of  mind  and  its  increase :  the  man 
who  astonishes  you  with  the  amount  of  knowl- 
edge stored  in  his  brain  may  be  no  greater  in 
mind  at  seventy  than  at  twenty. 

Comparing  the  sexes  again,  we  might  say  that 
the  female  mind  reaches  perfection  in  child- 
hood, long  before  the  physical  change  from  a 
generalised  to  a  specialised  form;  whereas  the 
male  retains  a  generalised  form  to  the  end  of 
life  and  never  ceases  to  advance  mentally.  The 
reason  is  obvious.  There  is  no  need  for  con- 
tinued progression  in  women,  and  Nature,  like 
the  grand  old  economist  she  is,  or  can  be  when 
she  likes,  matures  the  mind  quickly  in  one  case 


172        A  TRAVELLER  IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

and  slowly  in  the  other;  so  slowly  that  he,  the 
young  male,  goes  crawling  on  all  fours  as  it 
were,  a  long  distance  after  his  little  flying  sister 
— slowly  because  he  has  very  far  to  go  and  must 
keep  on  for  a  very,  very  long  time. 

I  met  Freckles  in  one  of  those  small  ancient 
out-of-the-world  market  towns  of  the  West  of 
England — Somerset  to  be  precise — which  are 
just  like  large  old  villages,  where  the  turnpike 
road  is  for  half  a  mile  or  so  a  High  Street,  wide 
at  one  point,  where  the  market  is  held.  For  a 
short  distance  there  are  shops  on  either  side,  suc- 
ceeded by  quiet  dignified  houses  set  back  among 
trees,  then  by  thatched  cottages,  after  which  suc- 
ceed fields  and  woods. 

I  had  lunched  at  the  large  old  inn  at  noon  on  a 
hot  summer's  day;  when  I  sat  down  a  black 
cloud  was  coming  up,  and  by-and-by  there  was 
thunder,  and  when  I  went  to  the  door  it  was 
raining  heavily.  I  leant  against  the  frame  of  the 
door,  sheltered  from  the  wet  by  a  small  tiled 
portico  over  my  head,  to  wait  for  the  storm  to 
pass  before  getting  on  my  bicycle.  Then  the 
innkeeper's  child,  aged  five,  came  out  and 
placed  herself  against  the  door-frame  on  the 


FRECKLES  173 

other  side.  We  regarded  one  another  with  a 
good  deal  of  curiosity,  for  she  was  a  queer- 
looking  little  thing.  Her  head,  big  for  her  size 
and  years,  was  as  perfectly  round  as  a  Dutch 
cheese,  and  her  face  so  thickly  freckled  that  it 
was  all  freckles;  she  had  confluent  freckles,  and 
as  the  spots  and  blotches  were  of  different 
shades,  one  could  see  that  they  overlapped  like 
the  scales  of  a  fish.  Her  head  was  bound  tightly 
round  with  a  piece  of  white  calico,  and  no  hair 
appeared  under  it. 

Just  to  open  the  conversation,  I  remarked  that 
she  was  a  little  girl  rich  in  freckles. 

"Yes,  I  know,"  she  returned,  "there's  no  one 
in  the  town  with  such  a  freckled  face." 

"And  that  isn't  all,"  I  went  on.  "Why  is  your 
head  in  a  night-cap  or  a  white  cloth  as  if  you 
wanted  to  hide  your  hair?  or  haven't  you  got 
any?" 

"I  can  tell  you  about  that,"  she  returned,  not 
in  the  least  resenting  my  personal  remarks.  "It 
is  because  I've  had  ringworms.  My  head  is 
shaved  and  I'm  not  allowed  to  go  to  school." 

"Well,"  I  said,  "all  these  unpleasant  experi- 
ences— ringworm,  shaved  head,  freckles,  and 


i74        A   TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

expulsion  from  school  as  an  undesirable  person 
—do  not  appear  to  have  depressed  you  much. 
You  appear  quite  happy." 

She  laughed  good-humouredly,  then  looked 
up  out  of  her  blue  eyes  as  if  asking  what  more 
I  had  to  say. 

Just  then  a  small  girl  about  thirteen  years 
old  passed  us — a  child  with  a  thin  anxious  face 
burnt  by  the  sun  to  a  dark  brown,  and  deep-set, 
dark  blue,  penetrating  eyes.  It  was  a  face  to 
startle  one;  and  as  she  went  by  she  stared  in- 
tently at  the  little  freckled  girl. 

Then  I,  to  keep  the  talk  going,  said  I  could 
guess  the  sort  of  life  that  child  led. 

"What  sort  of  life  does  she  lead?"  asked 
Freckles. 

She  was,  I  said,  a  child  from  some  small  farm 
in  the  neighbourhood,  and  had  a  very  hard  life, 
and  was  obliged  to  do  a  great  deal  more  work 
indoors  and  out  than  was  quite  good  for  her  at 
her  tender  age.  "But  I  wonder  why  she  stared 
at  you?"  I  concluded. 

"Did  she  stare  at  me! — Why  did  she  stare?" 

"I  suppose  it  was  because  she  saw  you,  a  mite 
of  a  child,  with  a  nightcap  on  her  head,  standing 


FRECKLES  175 

here  at  the  door  of  the  inn  talking  to  a  stranger 
just  like  some  old  woman." 

She  laughed  again,  and  said  it  was  funny  for 
a  child  of  five  to  be  called  an  old  woman.  Then, 
with  a  sudden  change  to  gravity,  she  assured  me 
that  I  had  been  quite  right  in  what  I  had  said 
about  that  little  girl.  She  lived  with  her 
parents  on  a  small  farm,  where  no  maid  was 
kept,  and  the  little  girl  did  as  much  work  or 
more  than  any  maid.  She  had  to  take  the  cows 
to  pasture  and  bring  them  back;  she  worked  in 
the  fields  and  helped  in  the  cooking  and  wash- 
ing, and  came  every  day  to  the  town  with  a  bas- 
ket of  butter,  and  eggs,  which  she  had  to  deliver 
at  a  number  of  houses.  Sometimes  she  came 
twice  in  a  day,  usually  in  a  pony-cart,  but  when 
the  pony  was  wanted  by  her  father  she  had  to 
come  on  foot  with  the  basket,  and  the  farm  was 
three  miles  out.  On  Sunday  she  didn't  come, 
but  had  a  good  deal  to  do  at  home. 

"Ah,  poor  little  slave!  No  wonder  she  gazed 
at  you  as  she  did ; — she  was  thinking  how  sweet 
your  life  must  be  with  people  to  love  and  care 
for  you  and  no  hard  work  to  do." 

"And  was  that  what  made  her  stare  at  me, 


i76       A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

and  not  because  I  had  a  nightcap  on  and  was 
like  an  old  woman  talking  to  a  stranger?"  This 
without  a  smile. 

"No  doubt.  But  you  seem  to  know  a  great 
deal  about  her.  Now  I  wonder  if  you  can  tell 
me  something  about  this  beautiful  young  lady 
with  an  umbrella  coming  towards  us?  I  should 
much  like  to  know  who  she  is — and  I  should 
like  to  call  on  her." 

"Yes,  I  can  tell  you  all  about  her.  She  is  Miss 
Eva  Langton,  and  lives  at  the  White  House. 
You  follow  the  street  till  you  get  out  of  the  town 
where  there  is  a  pond  at  this  end  of  the  common, 
and  just  a  little  the  other  side  of  the  pond  there 
are  big  trees,  and  behind  the  trees  a  white  gate. 
That's  the  gate  of  the  White  House,  only  you 
can't  see  it  because  the  trees  are  in  the  way.  Are 
you  going  to  call  on  her?" 

I  explained  that  I  did  not  know  her,  and 
though  I  wished  I  did  because  she  was  so  pretty, 
it  would  not  perhaps  be  quite  right  to  go  to  her 
house  to  see  her. 

"I'm  sorry  you're  not  going  to  call,  she's  such 
a  nice  young  lady.  Everybody  likes  her."  And 
then,  after  a  few  moments,  she  looked  up  with 


FRECKLES  17  7 

a  smile,  and  said,  "Is  there  anything  else  I  can 
tell  you  about  the  people  of  the  town?  There's 
a  man  going  by  in  the  rain  with  a  lot  of  planks 
on  his  head — would  you  like  to  know  who  he  is 
and  all  about  him?" 

"Oh  yes,  certainly,"  I  replied.  "But  of  course 
I  don't  care  so  much  about  him  as  I  do  about 
that  little  brown  girl  from  the  farm,  and  the  nice 
Miss  Langton  from  the  White  House.  But  it's 
really  very  pleasant  to  listen  to  you  whatever 
you  talk  about.  I  really  think  you  one  of  the 
most  charming  little  girls  I  have  ever  met,  and 
I  wonder  what  you  will  be  like  in  another  five 
years.  I  think  I  must  come  and  see  for  myself." 

"Oh,  will  you  come  back  in  five  years?  Just 
to  see  me!  My  hair  will  be  grown  then  and  I 
won't  have  a  nightcap  on,  and  I'll  try  to  wash 
off  the  freckles  before  you  come." 

"No,  don't,"  I  said.  "I  had  forgotten  all 
about  them — I  think  they  are  very  nice." 

She  laughed,  then  looking  up  a  little  archly, 
said :  "You  are  saying  all  that  just  for  fun,  are 
you  not?" 

"Oh  no,  nothing  of  the  sort.  Just  look  at  me, 
and  say  if  you  do  not  believe  what  I  tell  you." 


178        A   TRAVELLER   IN   LITTLE   THINGS 

"Yes,  I  do,"  she  answered  frankly  enough, 
looking  full  in  my  eyes  with  a  great  seriousness 
in  her  own. 

That  sudden  seriousness  and  steady  gaze;  that 
simple,  frank  declaration!  Would  five  years 
leave  her  in  that  stage?  I  fancy  not,  for  at  ten 
she  would  be  self-conscious,  and  the  loss  would 
be  greater  than  the  gain.  No,  I  would  not 
come  back  in  five  years  to  see  what  she  was  like. 

That  was  the  end  of  our  talk.  She  looked 
towards  the  wet  street  and  her  face  changed, 
and  with  a  glad  cry  she  darted  out.  The  rain 
was  over,  and  a  big  man  in  a  grey  tweed  coat  was 
coming  across  the  road  to  our  side.  She  met 
him  half-way,  and  bending  down  he  picked  her 
up  and  set  her  on  his  shoulder  and  marched  with 
her  into  the  house. 

There  were  others,  it  seemed,  who  were  able 
to  appreciate  her  bright  mind  and  could  forget 
all  about  her  freckles  and  her  nightcap. 


XIX 

ON  CROMER  BEACH 

IT  is  true  that  when  little  girls  become  self- 
conscious  they  lose  their  charm,  or  the  best 
part  of  it;  they  are  at  their  best  as  a  rule  from 
five  to  seven,  after  which  begins  a  slow,  almost 
imperceptible    decline    (or    evolution,    if    you 
like)  until  the  change  is  complete.    The  charm 
in  decline  was  not  good  enough  for  Lewis  Car- 
roll; the  successive  little  favourites,  we  learn, 
were  always  dropped  at  about  ten.     That  was 
the  limit.     Perhaps  he  perceived,  with  a  rare 
kind   of  spiritual  sagacity   resembling  that  of 
certain    animals   with    regard    to    approaching 
weather-changes,  that  something  had  come  into 
their  heart,  or  would  shortly  come,  which  would 
make  them  no  longer  precious  to  him.    But  that 
which  had  made  them  precious  was  not  far  to 
seek:  he  would  find  it  elsewhere,  and  could  af- 
ford to  dismiss  his  Alice  for  the  time  being  from 
his  heart  and  life,  and  even  from  his  memory, 
without  a  qualm. 

179 


i8o        A   TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

To  my  seven-years'  rule  there  are,  however, 
many  exceptions — little  girls  who  keep  the 
child's  charm  in  spite  of  the  changes  which 
years  and  a  newly  developing  sense  can  bring  to 
them.  I  have  met  with  some  rare  instances  of 
the  child  being  as  much  to  us  at  ten  as  at  five. 

One  instance  which  I  have  in  my  mind  just 
now  is  of  a  little  girl  of  nine,  or  perhaps  nearly 
ten,  and  it  seemed  to  me  in  this  case  that  this 
new  sense,  the  very  quality  which  is  the  spoiler 
of  the  child-charm,  may  sometimes  have  the  ef- 
fect of  enhancing  it  or  revealing  it  in  a  new  and 
more  beautiful  aspect. 

I  met  her  at  Cromer,  where  she  was  one  of  a 
small  group  of  five  visitors;  three  ladies,  one 
old,  the  others  middle-aged,  and  a  middle-aged 
gentleman.  He  and  one  of  the  two  younger 
ladies  were  perhaps  her  parents,  and  the  elderly 
lady  her  grandmother.  What  and  who  these 
people  were  I  never  heard,  nor  did  I  enquire; 
but  the  child  attracted  me,  and  in  a  funny  way 
we  became  acquainted,  and  though  we  never  ex- 
changed more  than  a  dozen  words,  I  felt  that  we 
were  quite  intimate  and  very  dear  friends. 

The  little  group  of  grown-ups  and  the  child 


ON  CROMER  BEACH  181 

were  always  together  on  the  front,  where  I  was 
accustomed  to  see  them  sitting  or  slowly  walking 
up  and  down,  always  deep  in  conversation  and 
very  serious,  always  regarding  the  more  or  less 
gaudily  attired  females  on  the  parade  with  an 
expression  of  repulsion.  They  were  old-fash- 
ioned in  dress  and  appearance,  invariably  in 
black — black  silk  and  black  broadcloth.  I  con- 
cluded that  they  were  serious  people,  that  they 
had  inherited  and  faithfully  kept  a  religion,  or 
religious  temper,  which  has  long  been  outlived 
by  the  world  in  general — a  puritanism  or  Evan- 
gelicalism dating  back  to  the  far  days  of  Wil- 
berforce  and  Hannah  More  and  the  ancient 
Sacred  order  of  Claphamites. 

And  the  child  was  serious  with  them  and  kept 
pace  with  them  with  slow  staid  steps.  But  she 
was  beautiful,  and  under  the  mask  and  mantle 
which  had  been  imposed  on  her  had  a  shin- 
ing child's  soul.  Her  large  eyes  were  blue,  the 
rare  blue  of  a  perfect  summer's  day.  There  was 
no  need  to  ask  her  where  she  had  got  that 
colour;  undoubtedly  in  heaven  "as  she  came 
through."  The  features  were  perfect,  and  she 
was  pale,  or  so  it  had  seemed  to  me  at  first,  but 


182        A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

when  viewing  her  more  closely  I  saw  that  colour 
was  an  important  element  in  her  loveliness — a 
colour  so  delicate  that  I  fell  to  comparing  her 
flower-like  face  with  this  or  that  particular 
flower.  I  had  thought  of  her  as  a  snowdrop  at 
first,  then  a  windflower,  the  March  anemone, 
with  its  touch  of  crimson,  then  various  white, 
ivory,  and  cream-coloured  blossoms  with  a 
faintly-seen  pink  blush  to  them. 

Her  dress,  except  the  stocking,  was  not 
black;  it  was  grey  or  dove-colour,  and  over  it  a 
cream  or  pale-fawn-coloured  cloak  with  hood, 
which  with  its  lace  border  seemed  just  the  right 
setting  for  the  delicate  puritan  face.  She 
walked  in  silence  while  they  talked  and  talked, 
ever  in  grave  subdued  tones.  Indeed  it  would 
not  have  been  seemly  for  her  to  open  her  lips  in 
such  company.  I  called  her  Priscilla,  but  she 
was  also  like  Milton's  pensive  nun,  devout  and 
pure,  only  her  looks  were  not  commercing  with 
the  skies;  they  were  generally  cast  down,  al- 
though it  is  probable  that  they  did  occasionally 
venture  to  glance  at  the  groups  of  merry  pink- 
legged  children  romping  with  the  waves  below. 

I  had  seen  her  three  or  four  or  more  times 


ON  CROMER  BEACH  183 

on  the  front  before  we  became  acquainted;  and 
she  too  had  noticed  me,  just  raising  her  blue  eyes 
to  mine  when  we  passed  one  another,  with  a  shy 
sweet  look  of  recognition  in  them — a  question- 
ing look;  so  that  we  were  not  exactly  strangers. 
Then,  one  morning,  I  sat  on  the  front  when  the 
black-clothed  group  came  by,  deep  in  serious 
talk  as  usual,  the  silent  child  with  them,  and 
after  a  turn  or  two  they  sat  down  beside  me. 
The  tide  was  at  its  full  and  children  were  com- 
ing down  to  their  old  joyous  pastime  of  pad- 
dling. They  were  a  merry  company.  After 
watching  them  I  glanced  at  my  little  neighbour 
and  caught  her  eyes,  and  she  knew  what  the 
question  in  my  mind  was — Why  are  not  you 
with  them?  And  she  was  pleased  and  troubled 
at  the  same  time,  and  her  face  was  all  at  once 
in  a  glow  of  beautiful  colour;  it  was  the  colour 
of  the  almond  blossom; — her  sister  flower  on 
this  occasion. 

A  day  or  two  later  we  were  more  fortunate. 
I  went  before  breakfast  to  the  beach  and  was 
surprised  to  find  her  there  watching  the  tide 
coming  in;  in  a  moment  of  extreme  indulgence 
her  mother,  or  her  people,  had  allowed  her  to 


184       A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

run  down  to  look  at  the  sea  for  a  minute  by  her- 
self. She  was  standing  on  the  shingle,  watching 
the  green  waves  break  frothily  at  her  feet,  her 
pale  face  transfigured  with  a  gladness  which 
seemed  almost  unearthly.  Even  then  in  that 
emotional  moment  the  face  kept  its  tender 
flower-like  character;  I  could  only  compare  it 
to  the  sweet-pea  blossom,  ivory  white  or  deli- 
cate pink;  that  Psyche-like  flower  with  wings 
upraised  to  fly,  and  expression  of  infantile  in- 
nocence and  fairy-like  joy  in  life. 

I  walked  down  to  her  and  we  then  exchanged 
our  few  and  only  words.  How  beautiful  the  sea 
was,  and  how  delightful  to  watch  the  waves 
coming  in!  I  remarked.  She  smiled  and  replied 
that  it  was  very,  very  beautiful.  Then  a  bigger 
wave  came  and  compelled  us  to  step  hurriedly 
back  to  save  our  feet  from  a  wetting,  and  we 
laughed  together.  Just  at  that  spot  there  was 
a  small  rock  on  which  I  stepped  and  asked  her 
to  give  me  her  hand,  so  that  we  could  stand  to- 
gether and  let  the  next  wave  rush  by  without 
wetting  us.  "Oh,  do  you  think  I  may?"  she 
said,  almost  frightened  at  such  an  adventure. 
Then,  after  a  moment's  hesitation,  she  put  her 


ON  CROMER  BEACH  185 

hand  in  mine,  and  we  stood  on  the  little  frag- 
ment of  rock,  and  she  watched  the  water  rush  up 
and  surround  us  and  break  on  the  beach  with 
a  fearful  joy.  And  after  that  wonderful  experi- 
ence she  had  to  leave  me;  she  had  only  been 
allowed  out  by  herself  for  five  minutes,  she  said, 
and  so,  after  a  grateful  smile,  she  hurried  back. 
Our  next  encounter  was  on  the  parade,  where 
she  appeared  as  usual  with  her  people,  and  noth- 
ing beyond  one  swift  glance  of  recognition  and 
greeting  could  pass  between  us.  But  it  was  a 
quite  wonderful  glance  she  gave  me,  it  said  so 
much: — that  we  had  a  great  secret  between  us 
and  were  friends  and  comrades  for  ever.  It 
would  take  half  a  page  to  tell  all  that  was  con- 
veyed in  that  glance.  "I'm  so  glad  to  see  you," 
it  said,  "I  was  beginning  to  fear  you  had  gone 
away.  And  now  how  unfortunate  that  you  see 
me  with  my  people  and  we  cannot  speak!  They 
wouldn't  understand.  How  could  they,  since 
they  don't  belong  to  our  world  and  know  what 
we  know?  If  I  were  to  explain  that  we  are 
different  from  them,  that  we  want  to  play  to- 
gether on  the  beach  and  watch  the  waves  and 
paddle  and  build  castles,  they  would  say,  'Oh 


186        A   TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

yes,  that's  all  very  well,  but — '  I  shouldn't  know 
what  they  meant  by  that,  should  you?  I  do 
hope  we'll  meet  again  some  day  and  stand  once 
more  hand  in  hand  on  the  beach — don't  you?" 
And  with  that  she  passed  on  and  was  gone, 
and  I  saw  her  no  more.  Perhaps  that  glance 
which  said  so  much  had  been  observed,  and  she 
had  been  hurriedly  removed  to  some  place  of 
safety  at  a  great  distance.  But  though  I  never 
saw  her  again,  never  again  stood  hand  in  hand 
with  her  on  the  beach  and  never  shall,  I  have 
her  picture  to  keep  in  all  its  flowery  freshness 
and  beauty,  the  most  delicate  and  lovely  per- 
haps of  all  the  pictures  I  possess  of  the  little 
girls  I  have  met. 


XX 

DIMPLES 

IT  is  not  pleasant  when  you  have  had  your 
say,  made  your  point  to  your  own  satisfaction, 
and  gone  cheerfully  on  to  some  fresh  subject, 
to  be  assailed  with  the  suspicion  that  your  in- 
terlocutor is  saying  mentally:  All  very  well — 
very  pretty  talk,  no  doubt,  but  you  haven't  con- 
vinced me,  and  I  even  doubt  that  you  have  suc- 
ceeded in  convincing  yourself! 

For  example,  a  reader  of  the  foregoing  notes 
may  say:  "If  you  really  find  all  this  beauty  and 
charm  and  fascination  you  tell  us  in  some  little 
girls,  you  must  love  them.  You  can't  admire 
and  take  delight  in  them  as  you  can  in  a  piece 
of  furniture,  or  tapestry,  or  a  picture  or  statue 
or  a  stone  of  great  brilliancy  and  purity  of 
colour,  or  in  any  beautiful  inanimate  object, 
without  that  emotion  coming  in  to  make  itself 
part  of  and  one  with  your  admiration.  You 
can't,  simply  because  a  child  is  a  human  being, 
and  we  do  not  want  to  lose  sight  of  the  being 

187 


1 88       A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

we  love.  So  long  as  the  love  lasts,  the  eye  would 
follow  its  steps  because — we  are  what  we  are, 
and  a  mere  image  in  the  mind  doesn't  satisfy  the 
heart.  Love  is  never  satisfied,  and  asks  not  for 
less  and  less  each  day  but  for  more — always  for 
more.  Then,  too,  love  is  credulous;  it  believes 
and  imagines  all  things  and,  like  all  emotions, 
it  pushes  reason  and  experience  aside  and  sticks 
to  the  belief  that  these  beautiful  qualities  can- 
not die  and  leave  nothing  behind:  they  are  not 
on  the  surface  only;  they  have  their  sweet 
permanent  roots  in  the  very  heart  and  centre 
of  being." 

That,  I  suppose,  is  the  best  argument  on  the 
other  side,  and  if  you  look  straight  at  it  for  six 
seconds,  you  will  see  it  dissolve  like  a  lump  of 
sugar  in  a  tumbler  of  water  and  disappear 
under  your  very  eyes.  For  the  fact  remains 
that  when  I  listen  to  the  receding  footsteps  of 
my  little  charmer,  the  sigh  that  escapes  me 
expresses  something  of  relief  as  well  as  regret. 
The  signs  of  change  have  perhaps  not  yet  ap- 
peared, and  I  wish  not  to  see  them.  Good-bye, 
little  one,  we  part  in  good  time,  and  may  we 
never  meet  again! 


DIMPLES  189 

Undoubtedly  one  loses  something,  but  it  can- 
not balance  the  gain.  The  loss  in  any  case  was 
bound  to  come,  and  had  I  waited  for  it  no  gain 
would  have  been  possible.  As  it  is,  I  am  like 
that  man  in  The  Pilgrim's  Progress,  by  some 
accounted  mad,  who  the  more  he  cast  away  the 
more  he  had.  And  the  way  of  it  is  this;  by  los- 
ing my  little  charmers  before  they  cease  from 
charming,  I  make  them  mine  for  always,  in  a 
sense.  They  are  made  mine  because  my  mind 
(other  minds,  too)  is  made  that  way.  That 
which  I  see  with  delight  I  continue  to  see  when 
it  is  no  more  there,  and  will  go  on  seeing  to  the 
end :  at  all  events  I  fail  to  detect  any  sign  of  de- 
cay or  fading  in  these  mind  pictures.  There  are 
people  with  money  who  collect  gems — dia- 
monds, rubies  and  other  precious  stones — who 
value  their  treasures  as  their  best  possessions, 
and  take  them  out  from  time  to  time  to  examine 
and  gloat  over  them.  These  things  are  trash  to 
me  compared  with  the  shining,  fadeless  images 
in  my  mind,  which  are  my  treasures  and  best 
possessions.  But  the  bright  and  beauteous  im- 
ages of  the  little  girl  charmers  would  not  have 
been  mine  if  instead  of  letting  the  originals  dis- 


i9o        A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

appear  from  my  ken  I  had  kept  them  too  long 
in  it.  All  because  our  minds,  our  memories  are 
made  like  that.  If  we  see  a  thing  once,  or  sev- 
eral times,  we  see  it  ever  after  as  we  first  saw 
it;  if  we  go  on  seeing  it  every  day  or  every  week 
for  years,  and  years,  we  do  not  register  a  count- 
less series  of  new  distinct  impressions,  record- 
ing all  its  changes:  the  new  impressions  fall 
upon  and  obliterate  the  others,  and  it  is  like  a 
series  of  photographs,  not  arranged  side  by  side 
for  future  inspection,  but  in  a  pile,  the  top  one 
alone  remaining  visible.  Looking  at  this  insipid 
face  you  would  not  believe,  if  told,  that  once 
upon  a  time  it  was  beautiful  to  you  and  had  a 
great  charm.  The  early  impressions  are  lost, 
the  charm  forgotten. 

This  reminds  me  of  the  incident  I  set  out  to 
narrate  when  I  wrote  "Dimples"  at  the  head  of 
this  note.  I  was  standing  at  a  busy  corner  in 
a  Kensington  thoroughfare  waiting  for  a  bus, 
when  a  group  of  three  ladies  appeared  and  came 
to  a  stand  a  yard  or  two  from  me  and  waited, 
too,  for  the  traffic  to  pass  before  attempting  to 
cross  to  the  other  side.  One  was  elderly  and 
feeble  and  was  holding  the  arm  of  another  of 


DIMPLES  191 

the  trio,  who  was  young  and  pretty.  Her  age 
was  perhaps  twenty;  she  was  of  medium  height, 
slim,  with  a  nice  figure  and  nicely  dressed.  She 
was  a  blonde,  with  light  blue-grey  eyes  and 
fluffy  hair  of  pale  gold:  there  was  little  colour 
in  her  face,  but  the  features  were  perfect  and 
the  mouth  with  its  delicate  curves  quite  beauti- 
ful. 

But  after  regarding  her  attentively  for  a 
minute  or  so,  looking  out  impatiently  for  my 
bus  at  the  same  time,  I  said  mentally:  "Yes,  you 
are  certainly  very  pretty,  perhaps,  beautiful, 
but  I  don't  like  you  and  I  don't  want  you. 
There's  nothing  in  you  to  correspond  to  that 
nice  outside.  You  are  an  exception  to  the  rule 
that  the  beautiful  is  the  good.  Not  that  you  are 
bad — actively,  deliberately  bad — you  haven't 
the  strength  to  be  that  or  anything  else;  you 
have  only  a  little  shallow  mind  and  a  little  cold- 
ish heart." 

Now  I  can  imagine  one  of  my  lady  readers 
crying  out:  "How  dared  you  say  such  mon- 
strous things  of  any  person  after  just  a  glance 
at  her  face?" 

Listen  to  me,  madam,  and  you  will  agree  that 


i92       A  TRAVELLER  IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

I  was  not  to  blame  for  saying  these  monstrous 
things.  All  my  life  I've  had  the  instinct  or 
habit  of  seeing  the  things  I  see;  that  is  to  say, 
seeing  them  not  as  cloud  or  mist-shapes  for  ever 
floating  past,  nor  as  people  in  endless  proces- 
sion "seen  rather  than  distinguished,"  but  dis- 
tinctly, separately,  as  individuals  each  with  a 
character  and  soul  of  its  very  own;  and  while 
seeing  it  in  that  way  some  little  unnamed  faculty 
in  some  obscure  corner  of  my  brain  hastily  scrib- 
bles a  label  to  stick  on  to  the  object  or  person 
before  it  passes  out  of  sight.  It  can't  be  pre- 
vented; it  goes  on  automatically;  it  isn't  me,  and 
I  can  no  more  interfere  or  attempt  in  any  way 
to  restrain  or  regulate  its  action  than  I  can  take 
my  legs  to  task  for  running  up  a  flight  of  steps 
without  the  mind's  supervision. 

But  I  haven't  finished  with  the  young  lady 
yet.  I  had  no  sooner  said  what  I  have  said  and 
was  just  about  to  turn  my  eyes  away  and  forget 
all  about  her,  when,  in  response  to  some  remarks 
of  her  aged  companion,  she  laughed,  and  in 
laughing  so  great  a  change  came  into  her  face 
that  it  was  as  if  she  had  been  transformed  into 
another  being.  It  was  like  a  sudden  breath  of 


DIMPLES  193 

wind  and  a  sunbeam  falling  on  the  still  cold 
surface  of  a  woodland  pool.  The  eyes,  icily 
cold  a  moment  before,  had  warm  sunlight  in 
them,  and  the  half-parted  lips  with  a  flash  of 
white  teeth  between  them  had  gotten  a  new 
beauty;  and  most  remarkable  of  all  was  a 
dimple  which  appeared  and.  in  its  swift  motions 
seemed  to  have  a  life  of  its  own,  flitting  about 
the  corner  of  the  mouth,  then  further  away  to 
the  middle  of  the  cheek  and  back  again.  A 
dimple  that  had  a  story  to  tell.  For  dimples, 
too,  like  a  delicate,  mobile  mouth,  and  even 
like  eyes,  have  a  character  of  their  own.  And 
no  sooner  had  I  seen  that  sudden  change  in  the 
expression,  and  especially  the  dimple,  than  I 
knew  the  face;  it  was  a  face  I  was  familiar  with 
and  was  like  no  other  face  in  the  world,  yet  I 
could  not  say  who  she  was  nor  where  and  when 
I  had  known  her!  Then,  when  the  smile  faded 
and  the  dimple  vanished,  she  was  a  stranger 
again — the  pretty  young  person  with  the  shal- 
low brain  that  I  did  not  like! 

Naturally  my  mind  worried  itself  with  this 
puzzle  of  a  being  with  two  distinct  expressions, 
one  strange  to  me,  the  other  familiar,  and  it 


I94       A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

went  on  worrying  me  all  that  day  until  I  could 
stand  it  no  longer,  and  to  get  rid  of  the  matter, 
I  set  up  the  theory  (which  didn't  quite  convince 
me)  that  the  momentary  expression  I  had  seen 
was  like  an  expression  in  some  one  I  had  known 
in  the  far  past.  But  after  dismissing  the  sub- 
ject in  that  way,  the  subconscious  mind  was  still 
no  doubt  working  at  it,  for  two  days  later  it  all 
at  once  flashed  into  my  mind  that  my  mysterious 
young  lady  was  no  other  than  the  little  Lillian  I 
had  known  so  well  eight  years  before!  She  was 
ten  years  old  when  I  first  knew  her,  and  I  was 
quite  intimately  acquainted  with  her  for  a  little 
over  a  year,  and  greatly  admired  her  for  her 
beauty  and  charm,  especially  when  she  smiled 
and  that  dimple  flew  about  the  corner  of  her 
mouth  like  a  twilight  moth  vaguely  fluttering 
at  the  rim  of  a  red  flower.  But  alas!  her  charm 
was  waning:  she  was  surrounded  by  relations 
who  adored  her,  and  was  intensely  self-consci- 
ous, so  that  when  after  a  year  her  people  moved 
to  a  new  district,  I  was  not  sorry  to  break  the 
connection,  and  to  forget  all  about  her. 

Now  that  I  had  seen  and  remembered  her 
again,  it  was  a  consolation  to  think  that  she  was 


DIMPLES  195 

already  in  her  decline  when  I  first  knew  and 
was  attracted  by  her  and  on  that  account  had 
never  wholly  lost  my  heart  to  her.  How  dif- 
ferent my  feelings  would  have  been  if  after  pro- 
nouncing that  irrevocable  judgment,  I  had 
recognised  one  of  my  vanished  darlings — one, 
say,  like  that  child  on  Cromer  Beach,  or  of 
dozens  of  other  fairylike  little  ones  I  have 
known  and  loved,  and  whose  images  are  endur- 
ing and  sacred! 


XXI 

WILD  FLOWERS  AND  LITTLE  GIRLS 


of  the  numerous  company  of 
little  girls  of  infinite  charm  I  have  met, 
and  of  their  evanishment,  I  have  a  vision  of  my- 
self on  horseback  on  the  illimitable  green  level 
pampas,  under  the  wide  sunlit  cerulean  sky  in 
late  September  or  early  October,  when  the  wild 
flowers  are  at  their  best  before  the  wilting  heats 
of  summer. 

Seeing  the  flowers  so  abundant,  I  dismount 
and  lead  my  horse  by  the  bridle  and  walk  knee- 
deep  in  the  lush  grass,  stooping  down  at  every 
step  to  look  closely  at  the  shy,  exquisite  blooms 
in  their  dewy  morning  freshness  and  divine  col- 
ours. Flowers  of  an  inexpressible  unearthly 
loveliness  and  unforgettable;  for  how  forget 
them  when  their  images  shine  in  memory  in  all 
their  pristine  morning  brilliance! 

That  is  how  I  remember  and  love  to  remem- 
196 


WILD    FLOWERS   AND    LITTLE    GIRLS      197 

her  them,  in  that  first  fresh  aspect,  not  as  they 
appear  later,  the  petals  wilted  or  dropped,  sun- 
browned,  ripening  their  seed  and  fruit. 

And  so  \vith  the  little  human  flowers.  I  love 
to  remember  and  think  of  them  as  flowers,  not 
as  ripening  or  ripened  into  young  ladies,  wives, 
matrons,  mothers  of  sons  and  daughters. 

As  little  girls,  as  human  flowers,  they  shone 
and  passed  out  of  sight.  Only  of  one  do  I  think 
differently,  the  most  exquisite  among  them,  the 
most  beautiful  in  body  and  soul,  or  so  I  imagine, 
perhaps  because  of  the  manner  of  her  vanishing 
even  while  my  eyes  were  still  on  her.  That  was 
Dolly,  aged  eight,  and  because  her  little  life  fin- 
ished then  she  is  the  one  that  never  faded,  never 
changed. 

Here  are  some  lines  I  wrote  when  grief  at  her 
going  was  still  fresh.  They  were  in  a  monthly 
magazine  at  that  time  years  ago,  and  were  set  to 
music,  although  not  very  successfully,  and  I 
wish  it  could  be  done  again. 


Should'st  thou  come  to  me  again 
From  the  sunshine  and  the  rain, 
With  thy  laughter  sweet  and  free, 
O  how  should  I  welcome  thee! 


i98        A   TRAVELLER   IN   LITTLE   THINGS 

Like  a  streamlet  dark  and  cold 
Kindled  into  fiery  gold 
By  a  sunbeam  swift  that  cleaves 
Downward  through  the  curtained  leaves; 

So  this  darkened  life  of  mine 
Lit  with  sudden  joy  would  shine, 
And  to  greet  thee  I  should  start 
With  a  great  cry  in  my  heart. 

Back  to  drop  again,  the  cry 
On  my  trembling  lips  would  die: 
Thou  would'st  pass  to  be  again 
With  the  sunshine  and  the  rain. 


XXII 
A  LITTLE  GIRL  LOST 

"V7"ET  once  more,  O  ye  little  girls,  I  come  to 
1  -*•  bid  you  a  last  good-bye — a  very  last  one 
this  time.  Not  to  you,  living  little  girls,  seeing 
that  I  must  always  keep  a  fair  number  of  you 
on  my  visiting  list,  but  to  a  fascinating  theme  I 
had  to  write  about.  For  I  did  really  and  truly 
think  I  had  quite  finished  with  it,  and  now  all 
at  once  I  find  myself  compelled  by  a  will 
stronger  than  my  own  to  make  this  one  further 
addition.  The  will  of  a  little  girl  who  is  not 
present  and  is  lost  to  me — a  wordless  message 
from  a  distance,  to  tell  me  that  she  is  not  to  be 
left  out  of  this  gallery.  And  no  sooner  has  her 
message  come  than  I  find  there  are  several  good 
reasons  why  she  should  be  included,  the  first  and 
obvious  one  being  that  she  will  be  a  valuable 
acquisition,  an  ornament  to  the  said  gallery. 
And  here  I  will  give  a  second  reason,  a  very 
important  one  (to  the  psychological  minded  at 

199 


200        A   TRAVELLER   IN   LITTLE   THINGS 

all  events),  but  not  the  most  important  of  all, 
for  that  must  be  left  to  the  last. 

In  the  foregoing  impressions  of  little  girls  I 
have  touched  on  the  question  of  the  child's  age 
when  that  "little  agitation  in  the  brain  called 
thought,"  begins.  There  were  two  remarkable 
cases  given;  one,  the  child  who  climbed  upon 
my  knee  to  amaze  and  upset  me  by  her  pessi- 
mistic remarks  about  life;  the  second,  my  little 
friend  Nesta — that  was  her  name  and  she  is  still 
on  my  visiting  list — who  revealed  her  callow 
mind  striving  to  grasp  an  abstract  idea — the 
idea  of  time  apart  from  some  visible  or  tangible 
object.  Now  these  two  were  aged  five  years; 
but  what  shall  we  say  of  the  child,  the  little  girl- 
child  who  steps  out  of  the  cradle,  so  to  speak, 
as  a  being  breathing  thoughtful  breath? 

It  makes  me  think  of  the  cradle  as  the  cocoon 
or  chrysalis  in  which,  as  by  a  miracle  (for  here 
natural  and  supernatural  seem  one  and  the 
same),  the  caterpillar  has  undergone  his  trans- 
formation and  emerging  spreads  his  wings  and 
forthwith  takes  his  flight  a  full-grown  butterfly 
with  all  its  senses  and  faculties  complete. 

Walking  on  the  sea  front  at  Worthing  one 


A  LITTLE  GIRL  LOST  201 

late  afternoon  in  late  November,  I  sat  down  at 
one  end  of  a  seat  in  a  shelter,  the  other  end  being 
occupied  by  a  lady  in  black,  and  between  us, 
drawn  close  up  to  the  seat,  was  a  perambulator 
in  which  a  little  girl  was  seated.  She  looked  at 
me,  as  little  girls  always  do,  with  that  question 
— What  are  you?  in  her  large  grey  intelligent 
eyes.  The  expression  tempted  me  to  address 
her,  and  I  said  I  hoped  she  was  quite  well. 

"O  yes,"  she  returned  readily.  "I  am  quite 
well,  thank  you." 

"And  may  I  know  how  old  you  are?" 

"Yes,  I  am  just  three  years  old.' 

I  should  have  thought,  I  said,  that  as  she 
looked  a  strong  healthy  child  she  would  have 
been  able  to  walk  and  run  about  at  the  age  of 
three. 

She  replied  that  she  could  walk  and  run  as 
well  as  any  child,  and  that  she  had  her  pram 
just  to  sit  and  rest  in  when  tired  of  walking. 

Then,  after  apologising  for  putting  so  many 
questions  to  her,  I  asked  her  if  she  could  tell  me 
her  name. 

"My  name,"  she  said,  "is  Rose  Mary  Cath- 
erine Maude  Caversham,"  or  some  such  name. 


202        A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

"Oh!"  exclaimed  the  lady  in  black,  opening 
her  lips  for  the  first  time,  and  speaking  sharply. 
"You  must  not  say  all  those  names!  It  is  enough 
to  say  your  name  is  Rose." 

The  child  turned  and  looked  at  her,  studying 
her  face,  and  then  with  heightened  colour  and 
with  something  like  indignation  in  her  tone,  she 
replied:  "That  is  my  name!  Why  should  I  not 
tell  it  when  I  am  asked?" 

The  lady  said  nothing,  and  the  child  turned 
her  face  to  me  again. 

I  said  it  was  a  very  pretty  name  and  I  had 
been  pleased  to  hear  it,  and  glad  she  told  it  to 
me  without  leaving  anything  out. 

Silence  still  on  the  part  of  the  lady. 

"I  think,"  I  resumed,  "that  you  are  a  rather 
wonderful  child; — have  they  taught  you  the 
ABC?" 

"Oh  no,  they  don't  teach  me  things  like  that 
— I  pick  all  that  up." 

"And  one  and  one  make  two — do  you  pick 
that  up  as  well?" 

"Yes,  I  pick  that  up  as  well." 

"Then,"     said     I,     recollecting     Humpty- 


A  LITTLE  GIRL  LOST  203 

Dumpty's  question  in  arithmetic  to  Alice,  "how 
much  is  one-an'-one-an'-one-an'-one-an'-one-an'- 
one?" — speaking  it  as  it  should  be  spoken,  very 
rapidly. 

She  looked  at  me  quite  earnestly  for  a  mo- 
ment, then  said,  "And  can  you  tell  me  how 
much  is  two-an'-two-an'-two-an'-two-an'-two- 
an'-two?" — and  several  more  two's  all  in  a  rapid 
strain. 

"No,"  I  said,  "you  have  turned  the  tables  on 
me  very  cleverly.  But  tell  me,  do  they  teach 
you  nothing?" 

"Oh  yes,  they  teach  me  something!"  Then 
dropping  her  head  a  little  on  one  side  and  lift- 
ing her  little  hands  she  began  practising  scales 
on  the  bar  of  her  pram.  Then,  looking  at  me 
with  a  half-smile  on  her  lips,  she  said:  "That's 
what  they  teach  me." 

After  a  little  further  conversation  she  told  me 
she  was  from  London,  and  was  down  with  her 
people  for  their  holiday. 

I  said  it  seemed  strange  to  me  she  should  be 
having  a  holiday  so  late  in  the  season.  "Look," 
I  said,  "at  that  cold  grey  sea  and  the  great 


204        A  TRAVELLER   IN   LITTLE   THINGS 

stretch  of  sand  with  only  one  group  of  two  or 
three  children  left  on  it  with  their  little  buckets 
and  spades." 

"Yes,"  she  said,  in  a  meditative  way;  "it  is 
very  late."  Then,  after  a  pause,  she  turned 
towards  me  with  an  expression  in  her  face  which 
said  plainly  enough:  I  am  now  going  to  give 
you  a  little  confidential  information.  Her 
words  were:  "The  fact  is  we  are  just  waiting  for 
the  baby." 

"Oh!"  screamed  the  lady  in  black.  "Why 
have  you  said  such  a  thing!  You  must  not  say 
such  things!" 

And  again  the  child  turned  her  head  and 
looked  earnestly,  inquiringly  at  the  lady,  trying, 
as  one  could  see  from  her  face,  to  understand 
why  she  was  not  to  say  such  a  thing.  But  now 
she  was  not  sure  of  her  ground  as  on  the  other 
occasion  of  being  rebuked.  There  was  a  mys- 
tery here  about  the  expected  baby  which  she 
could  not  fathom.  Why  was  it  wrong  for  her 
to  mention  that  simple  fact?  That  question  was 
on  her  face  when  she  looked  at  her  attendant, 
the  lady  in  black,  and  as  no  answer  was  forth- 
coming, either  from  the  lady,  or  out  of  her  own 


A  LITTLE  GIRL  LOST  205 

head,  she  turned  to  me  again,  the  dissatisfied 
expression  still  in  her  eyes;  then  it  passed  away 
and  she  smiled.  It  was  a  beautiful  smile,  all 
the  more  because  it  came  only  at  rare  intervals 
and  quickly  vanished,  because,  as  it  seemed  to 
me,  she  was  all  the  time  thinking  too  closely 
about  what  was  being  said  to  smile  easily  or 
often.  And  the  rarity  of  her  smile  made  her 
sense  of  humour  all  the  more  apparent.  She 
was  not  like  Marjorie  Fleming,  that  immortal 
little  girl,  who  was  wont  to  be  angry  when  of- 
fensively condescending  grown-ups  addressed 
her  as  a  babe  in  intellect.  For  Marjorie  had  no 
real  sense  of  humour;  all  the  humour  of  her 
literary  composition,  verse  and  prose,  was  of 
the  unconscious  variety.  This  child  was  only 
amused  at  being  taken  for  a  baby. 

Then  came  the  parting.  I  said  I  had  spent  a 
most  delightful  hour  with  her,  and  she,  smiling 
once  more  put  out  her  tiny  hand,  and  said  in 
the  sweetest  voice:  "Perhaps  we  shall  meet 
again." 

Those  last  five  words!  If  she  had  been  some 
great  lady,  an  invalid  in  a  bath-chair,  who  had 
conversed  for  half  an  hour  with  a  perfect 


2o6       A  TRAVELLER  IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

stranger  and  had  wished  to  express  the  pleasure 
and  interest  she  had  had  in  the  colloquy,  she 
could  not  have  said  more,  nor  less,  nor  said  it 
more  graciously,  more  beautifully. 

But  we  did  not  meet  again,  for  when  I  looked 
for  her  she  was  not  there:  she  had  gone  out  of 
my  life,  like  Priscilla,  and  like  so  many  beauti- 
ful things  that  vanish  and  return  not. 

And  now  I  return  to  what  I  said  at  the  be- 
ginning— that  there  were  several  reasons  for  in- 
cluding this  little  girl  in  my  series  of  impres- 
sions. The  most  important  one  has  been  left 
until  now.  I  want  to  meet  her  again,  but  how 
shall  I  find  her  in  this  immensity  of  London — 
these  six  millions  of  human  souls!  Let  me  beg 
of  any  reader  who  knows  Rose  Mary  Angela 
Catherine  Maude  Caversham — a  name  like  that 
— who  has  identified  her  from  my  description 
— that  he  will  inform  me  of  her  whereabouts. 


XXIII 
A   SPRAY   OF   SOUTHERNWOOD 

TO  pass  from  little  girls  to  little  boys  is  to 
go  into  quite  another,  an  inferior,  coarser 
world.  No  doubt  there  are  wonderful  little 
boys,  but  as  a  rule  their  wonderfulness  consists 
in  a  precocious  intellect:  this  kind  doesn't  ap- 
peal to  me,  so  that  if  I  were  to  say  anything  on 
the  matter,  it  would  be  a  prejudiced  judgment. 
Even  the  ordinary  civilised  little  boy,  the  nice 
little  gentleman  who  is  as  much  at  home  in  the 
drawing-room  as  at  his  desk  in  the  school-room 
or  with  a  bat  in  the  playing-field — even  that 
harmless  little  person  seems  somehow  unnatural, 
or  denaturalised  to  my  primitive  taste.  A  re- 
sult, I  will  have  it,  of  improper  treatment.  He 
has  been  under  the  tap,  too  thoroughly  scrubbed, 
boiled,  strained  and  served  up  with  melted  but- 
ter and  a  sprig  of  parsley  for  ornament  in  a  gilt- 
edged  dish.  I  prefer  him  raw,  and  would  rather 
have  the  street-Arab,  if  in  town,  and  the  un- 
kempt, rough  and  tough  cottage  boy  in  the  coun- 

207 


208        A   TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

try.  But  take  them  civilised  or  natural,  those 
who  love  and  observe  little  children  no  more 
expect  to  find  that  peculiar  exquisite  charm  of 
the  girl-child  which  I  have  endeavoured  to  de- 
scribe in  the  boy,  than  they  would  expect  the 
music  of  the  wood-lark  and  the  airy  fairy  grace 
and  beauty  of  the  grey  wagtail 'in  Philip  Spar- 
row. And  yet,  incredible  as  it  seems,  that  very 
quality  of  the  miraculous  little  girl  is  sometimes 
found  in  the  boy  and,  with  it,  strange  to  say, 
the  boy's  proper  mind  and  spirit.  The  child 
lover  will  meet  with  one  of  that  kind  once  in 
ten  years,  or  not  so  often — not  oftener  than  a 
collector  of  butterflies  will  meet  with  a  Camber- 
well  Beauty.  The  miraculous  little  girl,  we 
know,  is  not  more  uncommon  than  the  Painted 
Lady,  or  White  Admiral.  And  I  will  here  give 
a  picture  of  such  a  boy — the  child  associated  in 
my  mind  with  a  spray  of  southernwood. 

And  after  this  impression,  I  shall  try  to  give 
one  or  two  of  ordinary  little  boys.  These  live  in 
memory  like  the  little  girls  I  have  written  about, 
not,  it  will  be  seen,  because  of  their  boy  nature, 
seeing  that  the  boy  has  nothing  miraculous, 
nothing  to  capture  the  mind  and  register  an  en- 


A  SPRAY  OF  SOUTHERNWOOD  209 

during  impression  in  it,  as  in  the  case  of  the  girl; 
but  owing  solely  to  some  unusual  circumstance 
in  their  lives — something  adventitious. 

It  was  hot  and  fatiguing  on  the  Wiltshire 
Downs,  and  when  I  had  toiled  to  the  highest 
point  of  a  big  hill  where  a  row  of  noble  Scotch 
firs  stood  at  the  roadside,  I  was  glad  to  get  off 
my  bicycle  and  rest  in  the  shade.  Fifty  or  sixty 
yards  from  the  spot  where  I  sat  on  the  bank 
on  a  soft  carpet  of  dry  grass  and  pine-needles, 
there  was  a  small,  old,  thatched  cottage,  the  only 
human  habitation  in  sight  except  the  little  vil- 
lage at  the  foot  of  the  hill,  just  visible  among 
the  trees  a  mile  ahead.  An  old  woman  in  the 
cottage  had  doubtless  seen  me  going  by,  for  she 
now  came  out  into  the  road,  and,  shading  her 
eyes  with  her  hand,  peered  curiously  at  me.  A 
bent  and  lean  old  woman  in  a  dingy  black  dress, 
her  face  brown  and  wrinkled,  her  hair  white. 
With  her,  watching  me  too,  was  a  little  mite  of 
a  boy;  and  after  they  had  stood  there  a  while 
he  left  her  and  went  into  the  cottage  garden,  but 
presently  came  out  into  the  road  again  and 
walked  slowly  towards  me.  It  was  strange  to 


2io        A  TRAVELLER   IN   LITTLE  THINGS 

see  that  child  in  such  a  place!  He  had  on  a 
scarlet  shirt  or  blouse,  wide  lace  collar,  and 
black  knickerbockers  and  stockings;  but  it  was 
his  face  rather  than  his  clothes  that  caused  me 
to  wonder.  Rarely  had  I  seen  a  more  beautiful 
child,  such  a  delicate  rose-coloured  skin,  and 
fine  features,  eyes  of  such  pure  intense  blue,  and 
such  shining  golden  hair.  How  came  this  an- 
gelic little  being  in  that  poor  remote  cottage 
with  that  bent  and  wrinkled  old  woman  for  a 
guardian? 

He  walked  past  me  very  slowly,  a  sprig  of 
southernwood  in  his  hand;  then  after  going  by 
he  stopped  and  turned,  and  approaching  me  in 
a  shy  manner  and  without  saying  a  word  offered 
me  the  little  pale  green  feathery  spray.  I  took 
it  and  thanked  him,  and  we  entered  into  conver- 
sation, when  I  discovered  that  his  little  mind 
was  as  bright  and  beautiful  as  his  little  person. 
He  loved  the  flowers,  both  garden  and  wild,  but 
above  everything  he  loved  the  birds;  he  watched 
them  to  find  their  nests;  there  was  nothing  he 
liked  better  than  to  look  at  the  little  spotted 
eggs  in  the  nest.  He  could  show  me  a  nest  if  I 
wanted  to  see  one,  only  the  little  bird  was  sitting 


A  SPRAY  OF  SOUTHERNWOOD  211 

on  her  eggs.  He  was  six  years  old,  and  that  cot- 
tage was  his  home — he  knew  no  other;  and  the 
old  bent  woman  standing  there  in  the  road  was 
his  mother.  They  didn't  keep  a  pig,  but  they 
kept  a  yellow  cat,  only  he  was  lost  now;  he  had 
gone  away,  and  they  didn't  know  where  to  find 
him.  He  went  to  school  now — he  walked  all 
the  way  there  by  himself  and  all  the  way  back 
every  day.  It  was  very  hard  at  first,  because 
the  other  boys  laughed  at  and  plagued  him. 
Then  they  hit  him,  but  he  hit  them  back  as  hard 
as  he  could.  After  that  they  hurt  him,  but  they 
couldn't  make  him  cry.  He  never  cried,  and 
always  hit  them  back,  and  now  they  were  begin- 
ning to  leave  him  alone.  His  father  was  named 
Mr.  Job,  and  he  worked  at  the  farm,  but  he 
couldn't  do  so  much  work  now  because  he  was 
such  an  old  man.  Sometimes  when  he  came 
home  in  the  evening  he  sat  in  his  chair  and 
groaned  as  if  it  hurt  him.  And  he  had  two  sis- 
ters; one  was  Susan;  she  was  married  and  had 
three  big  girls;  and  Jane  was  married  too,  but 
had  no  children.  They  lived  a  great  way  off. 
So  did  his  brother.  His  name  was  Jim,  and  he 
was  a  great  fat  man  and  sometimes  came  from 


212       A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

London,  where  he  lived,  to  see  them.  He  didn't 
know  much  about  Jim;  he  was  very  silent,  but 
not  with  mother.  Those  two  would  shut  them- 
selves up  together  and  talk  and  talk,  but  no  one 
knew  what  they  were  talking  about.  He  would 
write  to  mother  too;  but  she  would  always  hide 
the  letters  and  say  to  father:  "It's  only  from 
Jim;  he  says  he's  very  well — that's  all."  But 
they  were  very  long  letters,  so  he  must  have  said 
more  than  that. 

Thus  he  prattled,  while  I,  to  pay  him  for  the 
southernwood,  drew  figures  of  the  birds  he  knew 
best  on  the  leaves  I  tore  from  my  note-book  and 
gave  them  to  him.  He  thanked  me  very  prettily 
and  put  them  in  his  pocket. 

"And  what  is  your  name?"  I  asked. 

He  drew  himself  up  before  me  and  in  a 
clear  voice,  pronouncing  the  words  in  a  slow 
measured  manner,  as  if  repeating  a  lesson,  he 
answered:  "Edmund  Jasper  Donisthorpe  Stan- 
ley Overington." 

The  name  so  astonished  me  that  I  remained 
silent  for  quite  two  minutes  during  which  I  re- 
peated it  to  myself  many  times  to  fix  it  in  my 
memory. 


A  SPRAY  OF  SOUTHERNWOOD  213 

"But  why,"  said  I  at  length,  "do  you  call 
yourself  Overington  when  your  father's  name  is 
Job?" 

"Oh,  that  is  because  I  have  two  fathers — Mr. 
Job,  my  very  old  father,  and  Mr.  Overington, 
who  lives  away  from  here.  He  comes  to  see  me 
sometimes,  and  he  is  my  father  too;  but  I  have 
only  one  mother — there  she  is  out  again  looking 
at  us." 

I  questioned  him  no  further,  and  no  further 
did  I  seek  those  mysteries  to  disclose,  and  so  we 
parted;  but  I  never  see  a  plant  or  sprig  of 
southernwood,  nor  inhale  its  cedarwood  smell, 
which  one  does  not  know  whether  to  like  or  dis- 
like, without  recalling  the  memory  of  that 
miraculous  cottage  child  with  a  queer  history 
and  numerous  names. 


XXIV 
IN  PORTCHESTER  CHURCHYARD 

TO  the  historically  and  archaeologically 
minded  the  castle  and  walls  at  Portchester 
are  of  great  importance.  Romans,  Britons, 
Saxons,  Normans — they  all  made  use  of  this 
well-defended  place  for  long  centuries,  and  it 
still  stands,  much  of  it  well  preserved,  to  be 
explored  and  admired  by  many  thousands  of 
visitors  every  year.  What  most  interested  me 
was  the  sight  of  two  small  boys  playing  in  the( 
churchyard.  The  village  church,  as  at  Silches- 
ter,  is  inside  the  old  Roman  walls,  in  a  corner, 
the  village  itself  being  some  distance  away. 
After  strolling  round  the  churchyard  I  sat  down 
on  a  stone  under  the  walls  and  began  watching 
the  two  boys — little  fellows  of  the  cottage  class 
from  the  village  who  had  come,  each  with  a  pair 
of  scissors,  to  trim  the  turf  on  two  adjoining 
mounds.  The  bigger  of  the  two,  who  was  about 
ten  years  old,  was  very  diligent  and  did  his  work 
neatly,  trimming  the  grass  evenly  and  giving  the 

214 


IN  PORTCHESTER  CHURCHYARD          215 

mound  a  nice  smooth  appearance.  The  other 
boy  was  not  so  much  absorbed  in  his  work;  he 
kept  looking  up  and  making  jeering  remarks 
and  faces  at  the  other,  and  at  intervals  his  busy 
companion  put  down  his  shears  and  went  for 
him  with  tremendous  spirit.  Then  a  chase 
among  and  over  the  graves  would  begin;  finally, 
they  would  close,  struggle,  tumble  over  a  mound 
and  pommel  one  another  with  all  their  might. 
The  struggle  over,  they  would  get  up,  shake  off 
the  dust  and  straws,  and  go  back  to  their  work. 
After  a  few  minutes  the  youngest  boy  recovered 
from  his  punishment,  and,  getting  tired  of  the 
monotony,  would  begin  teasing  again,  and  a 
fresh  flight  and  battle  would  ensue. 

By-and-by,  after  witnessing  several  of  these 
fights,  I  went  down  and  sat  on  a  mound  next 
to  theirs  and  entered  into  conversation  with 
them. 

"Whose  grave  are  you  trimming?"  I  asked 
the  elder  boy. 

It  was  his  sister's,  he  said,  and  when  I  asked 
him  how  long  she  had  been  dead,  he  answered, 
"Twenty  years."  She  had  died  more  than  ten 
years  before  he  was  born.  He  said  there  had 


216        A   TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

been  eight  of  them  born,  and  he  was  the  young- 
est of  the  lot;  his  eldest  brother  was  married  and 
had  children  five  or  six  years  old.  Only  one  of 
the  eight  had  died — this  sister,  when  she  was  a 
little  girl.  Her  name  was  Mary,  and  one  day 
every  week  his  mother  sent  him  to  trim  the 
mound.  He  did  not  remember  when  it  began — 
he  must  have  been  very  small.  He  had  to  trim 
the  grass,  and  in  summer  to  water  it  so  as  to 
keep  it  always  smooth  and  fresh  and  green. 

Before  he  had  finished  his  story  the  other 
little  fellow,  who  was  not  interested  in  it  and 
was  getting  tired  again,  began  in  a  low  voice  to 
mock  at  his  companion,  repeating  his  words 
after  him.  Then  my  little  fellow,  with  a  very 
serious,  resolute  air,  put  the  scissors  down,  and 
in  a  moment  they  were  both  up  and  away,  doub- 
ling this  way  and  that,  bounding  over  the 
mounds,  like  two  young  dogs  at  play,  until,  roll- 
ing over  together,  they  fought  again  in  the  grass. 
There  I  left  them  and  strolled  away,  thinking  of 
the  mother  busy  and  cheerful  in  her  cottage  over 
there  in  the  village,  but  always  with  that  image 
of  the  little  girl,  dead  these  twenty  years,  in 
her  heart. 


XXV 

HOMELESS 

ONE  cold  morning  at  Penzance  I  got  into 
an  omnibus  at  the  station  to  travel  to  the 
small  town  of  St.  Just,  six  or  seven  miles  away. 
Just  before  we  started,  a  party  of  eight  or  ten 
queer-looking  people  came  hurriedly  up  and 
climbed  to  the  top  seats.  They  were  men  and 
women,  with  two  or  three  children,  the  women 
carelessly  dressed,  the  men  chalky-faced  and 
long-haired,  in  ulsters  of  light  colours  and  large 
patterns.  When  we  had  travelled  two  or  three 
miles  one  of  the  outside  passengers  climbed 
down  and  came  in  to  escape  from  the  cold, 
and  edged  into  a  place  opposite  mine.  He  was 
a  little  boy  of  about  seven  or  eight  years  old, 
and  he  had  a  small,  quaint  face  with  a  tired  ex- 
pression on  it,  and  wore  a  soiled  scarlet  Turkish 
fez  on  his  head,  and  a  big  pepper-and-salt  over- 
coat heavily  trimmed  with  old,  ragged  imita- 
tion astrachan.  He  was  keenly  alive  to  the  sen- 

217 


2i8        A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

sation  his  entrance  created  among  us  when  the 
loud  buzz  of  conversation  ceased  very  suddenly 
and  all  eyes  were  fixed  on  him;  but  he  bore  it 
very  bravely,  sitting  back  in  his  seat,  rubbing 
his  cold  hands  together,  then  burying  them  deep 
in  his  pockets  and  fixing  his  eyes  on  the  roof. 
Soon  the  talk  recommenced,  and  the  little  fel- 
low, wishing  to  feel  more  free,  took  his  hands 
out  and  tried  to  unbutton  his  coat.  The  top 
button — a  big  horn  button — resisted  the  efforts 
he  made  with  his  stiff  little  fingers,  so  I  undid  it 
for  him  and  threw  the  coat  open,  disclosing  a 
blue  jersey  striped  with  red,  green  velvet  knick- 
erbockers, and  black  stockings,  all  soiled  like 
the  old  scarlet  flower-pot  shaped  cap.  In  his 
get-up  he  reminded  me  of  a  famous  music- 
master  and  composer  of  my  acquaintance,  whose 
sense  of  harmony  is  very  perfect  with  regard  to 
sounds,  but  exceedingly  crude  as  to  colours. 
Imagine  a  big,  long-haired  man  arrayed  in  a 
bottle-green  coat,  scarlet  waistcoat,  pink  necktie, 
blue  trousers,  white  hat,  purple  gloves  and  yel- 
low boots!  If  it  were  not  for  the  fact  that  he 
wears  his  clothes  a  very  long  time  and  never  has 
them  brushed  or  the  grease  spots  taken  out,  the 


HOMELESS  219 

effect  would  be  almost  painful.  But  he  selects 
his  colours,  whereas  the  poor  little  boy  probably 
had  no  choice  in  the  matter. 

By-and-by  the  humorous  gentleman  who  sat 
on  either  side  of  him  began  to  play  him  little 
tricks,  one  snatching  off  his  scarlet  cap  and  the 
other  blowing  on  his  neck.  He  laughed  a  little, 
just  to  show  that  he  didn't  object  to  a  bit  of  fun 
at  his  expense,  but  when  the  annoyance  was  con- 
tinued he  put  on  a  serious  face,  and  folding  up 
his  cap  thrust  it  into  his  overcoat  pocket.  He 
was  not  going  to  be  made  a  butt  of! 

"Where  is  your  home?"  I  asked  him. 

"I  haven't  got  a  home,"  he  returned. 

"What,  no  home?  Where  was  your  home 
when  you  had  one?" 

"I  never  had  a  home,"  he  said.  "I've  always 
been  travelling;  but  sometimes  we  stay  a  month 
in  a  place."  Then,  after  an  interval,  he  added: 
"I  belong  to  a  dramatic  company." 

"And  do  you  ever  go  on  the  stage  to  act?"  I 
asked. 

"Yes,"  he  returned,  with  a  weary  little  sigh. 

Then  our  journey  came  to  an  end,  and  we 
saw  the  doors  and  windows  of  the  St.  Just  Work- 


220        A   TRAVELLER   IN   LITTLE   THINGS 

ing  Men's  Institute  aflame  with  yellow  placards 
announcing  a  series  of  sensational  plays  to  be 
performed  there. 

The  queer-looking  people  came  down  and 
straggled  off  to  the  Institute,  paying  no  atten- 
tion to  the  small  boy.  "Let  me  advise  you,"  I 
said,  standing  over  him  on  the  pavement,  "to 
treat  yourself  to  a  stiff  tumbler  of  grog  after 
your  cold  ride,"  and  at  the  same  time  I  put  my 
hand  in  my  pocket. 

He  didn't  smile,  but  at  once  held  out  his  open 
hand.  I  put  some  pence  in  it,  and  clutching 
them  he  murmured  "Thank  you,"  and  went 
after  the  others. 


XXVI 
THE  STORY  OF  A  SKULL 

A  QUARTER  of  a  century  ago  there  were 
*•  *•  still  to  be  seen  in  the  outer  suburbs  of 
London  many  good  old  roomy  houses,  standing 
in  their  own  ample  and  occasionally  park-like 
grounds,  which  have  now  ceased  to  exist.  They 
were  old  manor-houses,  mostly  of  the  Georgian 
period,  some  earlier,  and  some,  too,  were  fine 
large  farmhouses  which  a  century  or  more  ago 
had  been  turned  into  private  residences  of  city 
merchants  and  other  persons  of  means.  Any 
middle-aged  Londoner  can  recall  a  house  or 
perhaps  several  houses  of  this  description,  and 
in  one  of  those  that  were  best  known  to  me  1 
met  with  the  skull,  the  story  of  which  I  wish  to 
tell. 

It  was  a  very  old-looking,  long,  low  red-brick 
building,  with  a  verandah  in  front,  and  being 
well  within  the  grounds,  sheltered  by  old  oak, 
elm,  ash  and  beech  trees,  could  hardly  be  seen 


222        A   TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

from  the  road.  The  lawns  and  gardens  were 
large,  and  behind  them  were  two  good-sized 
grass  fields.  Within  the  domain  one  had  the 
feeling  that  he  was  far  away  in  the  country  in 
one  of  its  haunts  of  ancient  peace,  and  yet  all 
round  it,  outside  of  its  old  hedges  and  rows  of 
elms,  the  ground  had  been  built  over,  mostly 
with  good-sized  brick  houses  standing  in  their 
own  gardens.  It  was  a  favourite  suburb  with 
well-to-do  persons  in  the  city,  rents  were  high 
and  the  builders  had  long  been  coveting  and 
trying  to  get  possession  of  all  this  land  which 
was  "doing  no  good,"  in  a  district  where  haunts 
of  ancients  peace  were  distinctly  out  of  place 
and  not  wanted.  But  the  owner  (aged  ninety- 
eight)  refused  to  sell. 

Not  only  the  builders,  but  his  own  sons  and 
sons'  sons  had  represented  to  him  that  the  rent 
he  was  getting  for  this  property  was  nothing  but 
an  old  song  compared  to  what  it  would  bring  in, 
if  he  would  let  it  on  a  long  building  lease.  There 
was  room  there  for  thirty  or  forty  good  houses 
with  big  gardens.  And  his  answer  invariably 
was:  "It  shan't  be  touched!  I  was  born  in 
that  house,  and  though  I'm  too  old  ever  to  go 


THE    STORY    OF    A    SKULL  223 

and  see  it  again,  it  must  not  be  pulled  down — 
not  a  brick  of  it,  not  a  tree  cut,  while  I'm  alive. 
When  I'm  gone  you  can  do  what  you  like,  be- 
cause then  I  shan't  know  what  you  are  doing." 

My  friends  and  relations,  who  were  in  occu- 
pation of  the  house,  and  loved  it,  hoped  that  he 
would  go  on  living  many,  many  years:  but  alas! 
the  visit  of  the  feared  dark  angel  was  to  them 
and  not  to  the  old  owner,  who  was  perhaps  "too 
old  to  die";  the  dear  lady  of  the  house  and  its 
head  was  taken  away  and  the  family  broken  up, 
and  from  that  day  to  this  I  have  never  ventured 
to  revisit  that  sweet  spot,  nor  sought  to  know 
what  has  been  done  to  it. 

At  that  time  it  used  to  be  my  week-end  home, 
and  on  one  of  my  early  visits  I  noticed  the  skull 
of  an  animal  nailed  to  the  wall  about  a  yard 
above  the  stable  door.  It  was  too  high  to  be 
properly  seen  without  getting  a  ladder,  and 
when  the  gardener  told  me  that  it  was  a  bull- 
dog's skull,  I  thought  no  more  about  it. 

One  day,  several  months  later,  I  took  a  long 
look  at  it  and  got  the  idea  that  it  was  not  a  bull- 
dog's skull — that  it  was  more  like  the  skull  of  a 
human  being  of  a  very  low  type.  I  then  asked 


224        A   TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

my  hostess  to  let  me  have  it,  and  she  said,  "Yes, 
certainly,  take  it  if  you  want  it."  Then  she 
added,  "But  what  in  the  world  do  you  want  that 
horrid  old  skull  for?"  I  said  I  wanted  to  find 
out  what  it  was,  and  then  she  told  me  that  it 
was  a  bulldog's  skull — the  gardener  had  told 
her.  I  replied  that  I  did  not  think  so,  that  it 
looked  to  me  more  like  the  skull  of  a  cave-man 
who  had  inhabited  those  parts  half  a  million 
years  ago,  perhaps.  This  speech  troubled  her 
very  much,  for  she  was  a  religious  woman,  and  it 
pained  her  to  hear  unorthodox  statements  about 
the  age  of  man  on  the  earth.  She  said  that  I 
could  not  have  the  skull,  that  it  was  dreadful 
to  her  to  hear  me  say  it  might  be  a  human  skull ; 
that  she  would  order  the  gardener  to  take  it 
down  and  bury  it  somewhere  in  the  grounds  at 
a  distance  from  the  house.  Until  that  was  done 
she  would  not  go  near  the  stables — it  would  be 
like  a  nightmare  to  see  that  dreadful  head  on 
the  wall.  I  said  I  would  remove  it  imme- 
diately; it  was  mine,  as  she  had  given  it  to  me, 
and  it  was  not  a  man's  skull  at  all — I  was  only 
joking,  so  that  she  need  not  have  any  qualms 
about  it. 


THE   STORY   OF   A   SKULL  22$ 

That  pacified  her,  and  I  took  down  the  old 
skull,  which  looked  more  dreadful  than  ever 
when  I  climbed  up  to  it,  for  though  the  dome 
of  it  was  bleached  white,  the  huge  eye  cavities 
and  mouth  were  black  and  filled  with  old  black 
mould  and  dead  moss.  Doubtless  it  had  been 
very  many  years  in  that  place,  as  the  long  nails 
used  in  fastening  it  there  were  eaten  up  with 
rust. 

When  I  got  back  to  London  the  box  with  the 
skull  in  it  was  put  away  in  my  book-room,  and 
rested  there  forgotten  for  two  or  three  years. 
Then  one  day  I  was  talking  on  natural  history 
subjects  to  my  publisher,  and  he  told  me  that  his 
son,  just  returned  from  Oxford,  had  developed 
a  keen  interest  in  osteology  and  was  making  a 
collection  of  mammalian  skulls  from  the  whale 
and  elephant  and  hippopotamus  to  the  harvest- 
mouse  and  lesser  shrew.  This  reminded  me  of 
the  long-forgotten  skull,  and  I  told  him  I  had 
something  to  send  him  for  his  boy's  collection, 
but  before  sending  it  I  would  find  out  what  it 
was.  Accordingly  I  sent  the  skull  to  Mr.  Frank 
E.  Beddard,  the  prosector  of  the  Zoological  So- 
ciety, asking  him  to  tell  me  what  it  was.  His 


226       A  TRAVELLER  IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

reply  was  that  it  was  the  skull  of  an  adult  gor- 
illa— a  fine  large  specimen. 

It  was  then  sent  on  to  the  young  collector  of 
skulls — who  will,  alas!  collect  no  more,  having 
now  given  his  life  to  his  country.  It  saddened 
me  a  little  to  part  with  it,  certainly  not  because 
it  was  a  pretty  object  to  possess,  but  only  be- 
cause that  bleached  dome  beneath  which  brains 
were  once  housed,  and  those  huge  black  cavities 
which  were  once  the  windows  of  a  strange  soul, 
and  that  mouth  that  once  had  a  fleshy  tongue 
that  youled  and  clicked  in  an  unknown  lan- 
guage could  not  tell  me  its  own  life-and-death 
history  from  the  time  of  its  birth  in  the  African 
forest  to  its  final  translation  to  a  wall  over  a 
stable  door  in  an  old  house  near  London. 

There  are  now  several  writers  on  animals  who 
are  not  exactly  naturalists,  not  yet  mere  fiction- 
ists,  but  who,  to  a  considerable  knowledge  of 
animal  psychology  and  extraordinary  sympathy 
with  all  wildness,  unite  an  imaginative  insight 
which  reveals  to  them  much  of  the  inner,  the 
mind  life  of  brutes.  No  doubt  the  greatest  of 
these  is  Charles  Roberts,  the  Canadian,  and  I 


THE  STORY  OF  A  SKULL  227 

only  wish  it  had  been  he  who  had  discovered 
the  old  gorilla  skull  above  the  stable  door,  and 
that  the  incident  had  fired  the  creative  brain 
which  gave  us  Red  Fox  and  many  another  won- 
derful biography. 

Now  here  is  an  odd  coincidence.  After  writ- 
ing the  skull  story  it  came  into  my  head  to  relate 
it  to  a  lady  I  was  dining  with,  and  I  also  told 
her  of  my  intention  of  putting  it  in  this  book  of 
Little  Things.  She  said  it  was  funny  that  she 
too  had  a  story  of  a  skull  which  she  had  thought 
of  telling  in  her  volume  of  Little  Things;  but 
no,  she  would  not  venture  to  do  so,  although  it 
was  a  better  story  than  mine, 

She  was  good  enough  to  let  me  hear  it,  and 
as  it  is  not  to  appear  elsewhere  I  can't  resist  the 
temptation  of  bringing  it  in  here. 

On  her  return  to  Europe  after  travelling  and 
residing  for  some  years  in  the  Far  East,  she 
established  herself  in  Paris  and  proceeded  to 
decorate  her  apartment  with  some  of  the  won- 
derful rich  and  rare  objects  she  had  collected 
in  outlandish  parts.  Gorgeous  fabrics,  embroi- 
deries, pottery,  metal  and  woodwork,  and  along 


228       A  TRAVELLER  IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

with  these  products  of  an  ancient  civilisation, 
others  of  rude  or  primitive  tribes,  quaint  head- 
gear and  plumes,  strings  and  ropes  of  beads, 
worn  as  garments  by  people  who  run  wild  in 
woods,  with  arrows,  spears  and  other  weapons. 
These  last  were  arranged  in  the  form  of  a  wheel 
over  the  entrance,  with  the  bleached  and  pol- 
ished skull  of  an  orang-utan  in  the  centre.  It 
was  a  very  perfect  skull,  with  all  the  formidable 
teeth  intact  and  highly  effective. 

She  lived  happily  for  some  months  in  her 
apartment  and  was  very  popular  in  Parisian  so- 
ciety and  visited  by  many  distinguished  people, 
who  all  greatly  admired  her  Eastern  decora- 
tions, especially  the  skull,  before  which  they 
would  stand  expressing  their  delight  with  fer- 
vent exclamations. 

One  day  when  on  a  visit  at  a  friend's  house, 
her  host  brought  up  a  gentleman  who  wished  to 
be  introduced  to  her.  He  made  himself  ex- 
tremely agreeable,  but  was  a  little  too  effusive 
with  his  complimentary  speeches,  telling  her 
how  delighted  he  was  to  meet  her,  and  how 
much  he  had  been  wishing  for  that  honour. 

After  hearing  this   two  or  three  times   she 


THE    STORY    OF    A  SKULL  229 

turned  on  him  and  asked  him  in  the  directest 
way  why  he  had  wished  to  see  her  so  very  much ; 
then,  anticipating  that  the  answer  would  be  that 
it  was  because  of  what  he  had  heard  of  her 
charm,  her  linguistic,  musical  and  various  other 
accomplishments,  and  so  on,  she  made  ready  to 
administer  a  nice  little  snub,  when  he  made  this 
very  unexpected  reply: 

"O  madame,  how  can  you  ask?  You  must 
know  we  all  admire  you  because  you  are  the 
only  person  in  all  Paris  who  has  the  courage 
and  originality  to  decorate  her  salon  with  a  hu- 
man skull." 


XXVII 
A    STORY    OF   A   WALNUT 

HE  was  a  small  old  man,  curious  to  look  at, 
and  every  day  when  I  came  out  of  my 
cottage  and  passed  his  garden  he  was  there,  his 
crutches  under  his  arms,  leaning  on  the  gate, 
silently  regarding  me  as  I  went  by.  Not  boldly; 
his  round  dark  eyes  were  like  those  of  some  shy 
animal  peering  inquisitively  but  shyly  at  the 
passer-by.  His  was  a  tumble-down  old  thatched 
cottage,  leaky  and  miserable  to  live  in,  with 
about  three-quarters  of  an  acre  of  mixed  garden 
and  orchard  surrounding  it.  The  trees  were  of 
several  kinds — cherry,  apple,  pear,  plum,  and 
one  big  walnut;  and  there  were  also  shade  trees, 
some  shrubs  and  currant  and  gooseberry  bushes, 
mixed  with  vegetables,  herbs,  and  garden 
flowers.  The  man  himself  was  in  harmony  with 
his  disorderly  but  picturesque  surroundings,  his 
clothes  dirty  and  almost  in  rags;  an  old  jersey  in 
place  of  a  shirt,  and  over  it  two  and  sometimes 

230 


A  STORY  OF  A  WALNUT  231 

three  waistcoats  of  different  shapes  and  sizes,  all 
of  one  indeterminate  earthy  colour;  and  over 
these  an  ancient  coat  too  big  for  the  wearer.  The 
thin  hair,  worn  on  the  shoulders,  was  dust-colour 
mixed  with  grey,  and  to  crown  all  there  was  a 
rusty  rimless  hat,  shaped  like  an  inverted  flower- 
pot From  beneath  this  strange  hat  the  small 
strange  face,  with  the  round,  furtive,  troubled 
eyes,  watched  me  as  I  passed. 

The  people  I  lodged  with  told  me  his  history. 
He  had  lived  there  many  years,  and  everybody 
knew  him,  but  nobody  liked  him, — a  cunning, 
foxy,  grabbing  old  rascal;  unsocial,  suspicious, 
unutterably  mean.  Never  in  all  the  years  of  his 
life  in  the  village  had  he  given  a  sixpence  or  a 
penny  to  anyone;  nor  a  cabbage,  nor  an  apple, 
nor  had  he  ever  lent  a  helping  hand  to  a  neigh- 
bour nor  shown  any  neighbourly  feeling. 

He  had  lived  for  himself  alone;  and  was  alone 
in  the  world,  in  his  miserable  cottage,  and  no 
person  had  any  pity  for  him  in  his  loneliness 
and  suffering  now  when  he  was  almost  disabled 
by  rheumatism. 

He  was  not  a  native  of  the  village;  he  had 
come  to  it  a  young  man,  and  some  kindly-dis- 


232        A   TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

posed  person  had  allowed  him  to  build  a  small 
hut  as  a  shelter  at  the  side  of  his  hedge.  Now 
the  village  was  at  one  end  of  a  straggling  com- 
mon, and  many  irregular  strips  and  patches  of 
common-land  existed  scattered  about  among  the 
cottages  and  orchards.  It  was  at  a  hedge-side 
on  the  border  of  one  of  these  isolated  patches 
that  the  young  stranger,  known  as  an  inoffensive, 
diligent,  and  exceedingly  quiet  young  man,  set 
up  his  hovel.  To  protect  it  from  the  cattle  he 
made  a  small  ditch  before  it.  This  ditch  he 
made  very  deep,  and  the  earth  thrown  out  he 
built  into  a  kind  of  rampart,  and  by  its  outer 
edge  he  put  a  row  of  young  holly  plants,  which 
a  good-natured  woodman  made  him  a  present 
of.  He  was  advised  to  plant  the  holly  behind 
the  ditch,  but  he  thought  his  plan  the  best,  and 
to  protect  the  young  plants  he  made  a  little  fence 
of  odd  sticks  and  bits  of  old  wire  and  hoop  iron. 
But  the  sheep  would  get  in,  so  he  made  a  new 
ditch;  and  then  something  else,  until  in  the 
course  of  years  the  three-quarters  of  an  acre  had 
been  appropriated.  That  was  the  whole  history, 
and  the  pilfering  had  gone  no  further  only  be- 
cause someone  in  authority  had  discovered  and 


A  STORY  OF  A  WALNUT  233 

put  a  stop  to  it.  Still,  one  could  see  that  (in 
spite  of  the  powers)  a  strip  a  few  inches  in 
breadth  was  being  added  annually  to  the  estate. 

I  was  so  much  interested  in  all  this  that  from 
time  to  time  I  began  to  pause  beside  his  gate 
to  converse  with  him.  By  degrees  the  timid,  sus- 
picious expression  wore  away,  and  his  eyes 
looked  only  wistful,  and  he  spoke  of  his  aches 
and  pains  as  if  it  did  him  good  to  tell  them  to 
another. 

I  then  left  the  village,  but  visited  it  from  time 
to  time,  usually  at  intervals  of  some  months,  al- 
ways to  find  him  by  his  gate,  on  his  own  prop- 
erty, which  he  won  for  himself  in  the  middle  of 
the  village,  and  from  which  he  watched  his 
neighbours  moving  about  their  cottages,  going 
and  coming,  and  was  not  of  them.  Then  a  whole 
year  went  by,  and  when  I  found  him  at  the  old 
gate  in  the  old  attitude,  with  the  old  wistful  look 
in  the  eyes,  he  seemed  glad  to  see  me,  and  we 
talked  of  many  things.  We  talked,  that  is,  of 
the  weather,  with  reference  to  the  crops,  and  his 
rheumatism.  What  else  in  the  world  was  there 
to  talk  of?  He  read  no  paper  and  heard  no 
news  and  was  of  no  politics;  and  if  it  can  be 


*34       A  TRAVELLER  IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

said  that  he  had  a  philosophy  of  life  it  was  a 
low-down  one,  about  on  a  level  with  that  of  a 
solitary  old  dog-badger  who  lives  in  an  earth  he 
has  excavated  for  himself  with  infinite  pains  in  a 
strong  stubborn  soil — his  home  and  refuge  in  a 
hostile  world. 

Finally,  casting  about  in  my  mind  for  some 
new  subject  of  conversation — for  I  was  reluctant 
to  leave  him  soon  after  so  long  an  absence — it 
occurred  to  me  that  we  had  not  said  anything 
about  his  one  walnut  tree.  Of  all  the  other  trees 
and  the  fruit  he  had  gathered  from  them  he  had 
already  spoken.  "By-the-way,"  I  said,  "did  your 
walnut  tree  yield  well  this  year?" 

"Yes,  very  well,"  he  returned;  then  he 
checked  himself  and  said,  "Pretty  well,  but  I 
did  not  get  much  for  them."  And  after  a  little 
hesitation  he  added,  "That  reminds  me  of  some- 
thing I  had  forgotten.  Something  I  have  been 
keeping  for  you — a  little  present" 

He  began  to  feel  in  the  capacious  pockets  of 
his  big  outside  waistcoat,  but  found  nothing.  "I 
must  give  it  up,"  he  said;  "I  must  have  mislaid 
it." 

He  seemed  a  little  relieved,  and  at  the  same 
time  a  little  disappointed ;  and  by-and-by,  on  my 


A  STORY  OF  A  WALNUT  235 

remarking  that  he  had  not  felt  in  all  his  pockets, 
began  searching  again,  and  in  the  end  produced 
the  lost  something — a  walnut!  Holding  it  up  a 
moment,  he  presented  it  to  me  with  a  little  for- 
ward jerk  of  the  hand  and  a  little  inclination  of 
the  head;  and  that  little  gesture,  so  unexpected 
in  him,  served  to  show  that  he  had  thought  a 
good  deal  about  giving  the  walnut  away,  and 
had  looked  on  it  as  rather  an  important  present. 
It  was,  perhaps,  the  only  one  he  had  ever  made 
in  his  life.  While  giving  it  to  me  he  said  very 
nicely,  "Pray  make  use  of  it." 

The  use  I  have  made  of  it  is  to  put  it  care- 
fully away  among  other  treasured  objects, 
picked  up  at  odd  times  in  out-of-the-way  places. 
It  may  be  that  some  minute  mysterious  insect 
or  infinitesimal  mite — there  is  almost  certain  to 
be  a  special  walnut  mite — has  found  an  entrance 
into  this  prized  nut  and  fed  on  its  oily  meat,  re- 
ducing it  within  to  a  rust-coloured  powder. 
The  grub  or  mite,  or  whatever  it  is,  may  do  so 
at  its  pleasure,  and  flourish  and  grow  fat,  and 
rear  a  numerous  family,  and  get  them  out  if  it 
can;  but  all  these  corroding  processes  and 
changes  going  on  inside  the  shell  do  not  in  the 
least  diminish  my  nut's  intrinsic  value. 


XXVII 
A   STORY   OF  A  JACKDAW 

AT  one  end  of  the  Wiltshire  village  where  I 
was  staying  there  was  a  group  of  half-a- 
dozen  cottages  surrounded  by  gardens  and  shade 
trees,  and  every  time  I  passed  this  spot  on  my 
way  to  and  from  the  downs  on  that  side,  I  was 
hailed  by  a  loud  challenging  cry — a  sort  of 
"Hullo,  who  goes  there!"  Unmistakably  the 
voice  of  a  jackdaw,  a  pet  bird  no  doubt,  friendly 
and  impudent  as  one  always  expects  Jackie  to 
be.  And  as  I  always  like  to  learn  the  history 
of  every  pet  daw  I  come  across,  I  went  down  to 
the  cottage  the  cry  usually  came  from  to  make 
enquiries.  The  door  was  opened  to  me  by  a 
tall,  colourless,  depressed-looking  woman,  who 
said  in  reply  to  my  question  that  she  didn't  own 
no  jackdaw.  There  was  such  a  bird  there,  but 
it  was  her  husband's  and  she  didn't  know  noth- 
ing about  it.  I  couldn't  see  it  because  it  had 
flown  away  somewhere  and  wouldn't  be  back 
for  a  long  time.  I  could  ask  her  husband  about 

236 


A  STORY  OF  A  JACKDAW  237 

it;  he  was  the  village  sweep,  and  also  had  a  car- 
penter's shop. 

I  did  not  venture  to  cross-question  her;  but 
the  history  of  the  daw  came  to  me  soon  enough 
—on  the  evening  of  the  same  day  in  fact.  I  was 
staying  at  the  inn  and  had  already  become  aware 
that  the  bar-parlour  was  the  customary  meeting- 
place  of  a  majority  of  the  men  in  that  small 
isolated  centre  of  humanity.  There  was  no  club 
nor  institute  or  reading-room,  nor  squire  or 
other  predominant  person  to  regulate  things  dif- 
ferently. The  landlord,  wise  in  his  generation, 
provided  newspapers  liberally  as  well  as  beer, 
and  had  his  reward.  The  people  who  gathered 
there  of  an  evening  included  two  or  three 
farmers,  a  couple  of  professional  gentlemen — 
not  the  vicar;  a  man  of  property,  the  postman, 
the  carrier,  the  butcher,  the  baker  and  other 
tradesmen,  the  farm  and  other  labourers,  and 
last,  but  not  least,  the  village  sweep.  A  curious 
democratic  assembly  to  be  met  with  in  a  rural 
village  in  a  purely  agricultural  district,  ex- 
tremely conservative  in  politics. 

I  had  already  made  the  acquaintance  of  some 
of  the  people,  high  and  low,  and  on  that  evening, 


238        A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS, 

hearing  much  hilarious  talk  in  the  parlour,  I 
went  in  to  join  the  company,  and  found  fifteen 
or  twenty  persons  present.  The  conversation, 
when  I  found  a  seat,  had  subsided  into  a  quiet 
tone,  but  presently  the  door  opened  and  a  short, 
robust-looking  man  with  a  round,  florid,  smiling 
face  looked  in  upon  us. 

"Hullo,  Jimmy,  what  makes  you  so  late?" 
said  someone  in  the  room.  "We're  waiting  to 
hear  the  finish  of  all  that  trouble  about  your  bird 
at  home.  Stolen  any  more  of  your  wife's  jewel- 
lery? Come  in,  and  let's  hear  all  about  it." 

"Oh,  give  him  time,"  said  another.  "Can't 
you  see  his  brain's  busy  inventing  something 
new  to  tell  us!" 

"Inventing,  you  say!"  exclaimed  Jimmy,  with 
affected  anger,  "There's  no  need  to  do  that! 
That  there  bird  does  tricks  nobody  would  think 
of." 

Here  the  person  sitting  next  to  me,  speaking 
low,  informed  me  that  this  was  Jimmy  Jacob, 
the  sweep,  that  he  owned  a  pet  jackdaw,  known 
to  every  one  in  the  village,  and  supposed  to  be 
the  cleverest  bird  that  ever  was.  He  added  that 
Jimmy  could  be  very  amusing  about  his  bird. 


A  STORY  OF  A  JACKDAW  239 

"I'd  already  begun  to  feel  curious  about  that 
bird  of  yours,"  I  said,  addressing  the  sweep. 
"I'd  like  very  much  to  hear  his  history.  Did 
you  take  him  from  the  nest?" 

"Yes,  Jim,"  said  the  man  next  to  me.  "Tell 
us  how  you  came  by  the  bird;  it's  sure  to  be  a 
good  story." 

Jimmy,  having  found  a  seat  and  had  a  mug  of 
beer  put  before  him,  began  by  remarking  that  he 
knew  someone  had  been  interesting  himself  in 
that  bird  of  his.  "When  I  went  home  to  tea 
this  afternoon,"  he  continued,  "my  missus,  she 
says  to  me:  'There's  that  bird  of  yours  again,' 
she  says." 

"  'What  bird,'  says  I.  'If  you  mean  Jac,'  says 
I,  'what's  he  done  now? — out  with  it.' 

"  'We'll  talk  about  what  he's  done  bimeby,' 
says  she.  'What  I  mean  is,  a  gentleman  called 
to  ask  about  that  bird.' 

"  'Oh,  did  he?'  says  I.  'Yes,' she  says.  'I  told 
him  I  didn't  know  nothing  about  it.  He  could 
go  and  ask  you.  You'd  be  sure  to  tell  him  a  lot.' 

"  'And  what  did  the  gentleman  say  to  that?' 
says  I. 

"  'He  arsked  me  who  you  was,  an'  I  said  you 


240         A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

was  the  sweep  an'  you  had  a  carpenter's  shop 
near  the  pub,  and  was  supposed  to  do  carpen- 
tering.' 

"Supposed  to  do  carpentering!  That's  how 
she  said  it. 

"  'And  what  did  the  gentleman  say  to  that?' 
says  I. 

"  'He  said  he  thought  he  seen  you  at  the  inn, 
and  I  said  that's  just  where  he  would  see  you.' 

"  'Anything  more  between  you  and  the  gentle- 
man?' says  I,  and  she  said:  'No,  nothing  more 
except  that  he  said  he'd  look  you  up  and  arst  if 
you  was  a  funny  little  fat  man,  sort  of  round, 
with  a  little  red  face.  And  I  said  "Yes,  that's 
him." ' " 

Here  I  thought  it  time  to  break  in.  "It's  true," 
I  said,  "I  called  at  your  cottage  and  saw  your 
wife,  but  there's  no  truth  in  the  account  you've 
given  of  the  conversation  I  had  with  her." 

There  was  a  general  laugh.  "Oh,  very  well," 
said  Jimmy.  "After  that  I've  nothing  more  to 
say  about  the  bird  or  anything  else." 

I  replied  that  I  was  sorry,  but  we  need  not 
begin  our  acquaintance  by  quarrelling — that  it 
would  be  better  to  have  a  drink  together, 


A  STORY  OF  A  JACKDAW  241 

Jimmy  smiled  consent,  and  I  called  for  an- 
other pint  for  Jimmy  and  a  soda  for  myself; 
then  added  I  was  so  sorry  he  had  taken  it  that 
way  as  I  should  have  liked  to  hear  how  he  got 
his  bird. 

He  answered  that  if  I  put  it  that  way  he 
wouldn't  mind  telling  me.  And  everybody  was 
pleased,  and  composed  ourselves  once  more  to 
listen. 

"How  I  got  that  there  bird  was  like  this,"  he 
began.  "It  were  about  half  after  four  in  the 
morning,  summer  before  last,  an'  I  was  just  hav- 
ing what  I  may  call  my  beauty  sleep,  when  all 
of  a  sudding  there  came  a  most  thundering  rat-a- 
tat-tat  at  the  door. 

"  'Good  Lord,'  says  my  missus,  'whatever  is 
that?' 

"  'Sounds  like  a  knock  at  the  door,'  says  I. 
'Just  slip  on  your  thingamy  an'  go  see.' 

"  'No,'  she  says,  'you  must  go,  it  might  be  a 
man.' 

"  'No,'  I  says,  'it  ain't  nothing  of  such  conse- 
kince  as  that.  It's  only  an  old  woman  come  to 
borrow  some  castor  oil.' 

"So  she  went  and  bime-by  comes  back  and 


242        A  TRAVELLER   IN   LITTLE   THINGS 

says:  'It's  a  man  that's  called  to  see  you  an'  it's 
very  important.' 

"  Tell  him  I'm  in  bed,'  says  I,  'and  can't  get 
up  till  six  o'clock.' 

"Well,  after  a  lot  of  grumbling,  she  went 
again,  then  came  back  and  says  the  man  won't 
go  away  till  he  seen  me,  as  it's  very  important. 
'Something  about  a  bird,'  she  says. 

"'A  bird!'  I  says,  'what  d'you  mean  by  a 
bird?' 

"  'A  rook!'  she  says. 

"  'A  rook!'  says  I.  'Is  he  a  madman,  or  what?' 

"  'He's  a  man  at  the  door,'  she  says,  'an'  he 
won't  go  away  till  he  sees  you,  so  you'd  better 
git  up  and  see  him.' 

"  'All  right,  old  woman,'  I  says,  'I'll  git  up 
as  you  say  I  must,  and  I'll  smash  him.  Get  me 
something  to  put  on,'  I  says. 

"  'No,'  she  says,  'don't  smash  him' ;  and  she 
give  me  something  to  put  on,  weskit  and 
trousers,  so  I  put  on  the  weskit  and  got  one  foot 
in  a  slipper,  and  went  out  to  him  with  the 
trousers  in  my  hand.  And  there  he  was  at  the 
door,  sure  enough,  a  tramp! 

"  'Now,  my  man,'  says  I,  very  severe-like, 


A  STORY  OF  A  JACKDAW  243 

'what's  this  something  important  you've  got  me 
out  of  bed  at  four  of  the  morning  for?  Is  it  the 
end  of  the  world,  or  what?' 

"He  looked  at  me  quite  calm  and  said  it 
was  something  important  but  not  that — not  the 
end  of  the  world.  'I'm  sorry  to  disturb  you,'  he 
says,  'but  women  don't  understand  things  prop- 
erly,' he  says,  'an'  I  always  think  it  best  to  speak 
to  a  man.' 

"  'That's  all  very  well,'  I  says,  'but  how  long 
do  you  intend  to  keep  me  here  with  nothing  but 
this  on?' 

"  'I'm  just  coming  to  it,'  he  says,  not  a  bit  put 
out.  'It's  like  this,'  he  says.  'I'm  from  the  north 
— Newcastle  way — an'  on  my  way  to  Dor- 
chester, looking  for  work,'  he  says. 

"  'Yes,  I  see  you  are!'  says  I,  looking  him  up 
and  down,  fierce-like. 

"  'Last  evening,'  he  says,  'I  come  to  a  wood 
about  a  mile  from  this  'ere  village,  and  I  says  to 
myself,  "I'll  stay  here  and  go  on  in  the  morn- 
ing." So  I  began  looking  about  and  found  some 
fern  and  cut  an  armful  and  made  a  bed  under 
a  oak-tree.  I  slep'  there  till  about  three  this 
morning.  When  I  opened  my  eyes,  what  should 


244       A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

I  see  but  a  bird  sitting  on  the  ground  close  to 
me?  I  no  sooner  see  it  than  I  says  to  myself, 
"That  bird  is  as  good  as  a  breakfast,"  I  says.  So 
I  just  put  out  my  hand  and  copped  it.  And  here 
it  is!'  And  out  he  pulled  a  bird  from  under  his 
coat. 

"  'That's  a  young  jackdaw,'  I  says. 

"  'You  may  call  it  a  jackdaw  if  you  like,'  says 
he;  'but  what  I  want  you  to  understand  is  that 
it  ain't  no  ornary  bird.  It's  a  bird,'  he  says, 
'that'll  do  you  hansom  and  you'll  be  proud  to 
have,  and  I've  called  here  to  make  you  a  present 
of  it.  All  I  want  is  a  bit  of  bread,  a  pinch  of 
tea,  and  some  sugar  to  make  my  breakfast  in  an 
hour's  time  when  I  git  to  some  cottage  by  the 
road  where  they  got  a  fire  lighted,'  he  says. 

"When  he  said  that,  I  burst  out  laughing,  a 
foolish  thing  to  do,  mark  you,  for  when  you 
laugh,  you're  done  for;  but  I  couldn't  help  it 
for  the  life  of  me.  I'd  seen  many  tramps  but 
never  such  a  cool  one  as  this. 

"I  no  sooner  laughed  than  he  put  the  bird  in 
my  hands,  and  I  had  to  take  it.  'Good  Lord!' 
says  I.  Then  I  called  to  the  missus  to  fetch  me 
the  loaf  and  a  knife,  and  when  I  got  it  I  cut  him 


A  STORY  OF  A  JACKDAW  245 

off  half  the  loaf.  'Don't  give  him  that,'  she  says : 
Til  cut  him  a  piece.'  But  all  I  says  was,  'Go 
and  git  me  the  tea.' 

"  'There's  a  very  little  for  breakfast,'  she  says. 
But  I  made  her  fetch  the  caddy,  and  he  put  out 
his  hand  and  I  half  filled  it  with  tea.  'Isn't  that 
enough?'  says  I;  'well,  then,  have  some  more,'  I 
says;  and  he  had  some  more.  Then  I  made  her 
fetch  the  bacon  and  began  cutting  him  rashers. 
'One's  enough,'  says  the  old  woman.  'No,'  says 
I,  'let  him  have  a  good  breakfast.  The  bird's 
worth  it,'  says  I  and  went  on  cutting  him  bacon. 
'Anything  more?'  I  arst  him. 

"  'If  you've  a  copper  or  two  to  spare,'  he  says, 
'it'll  be  a  help  to  me  on  my  way  to  Dor- 
chester.' 

"  'Certainly,'  says  I,  and  I  began  to  feel  in  my 
trouser  pockets  and  found  a  florin.  'Here,'  I 
says,  'it's  all  I  have,  but  you're  more  than  wel- 
come to  it.' 

"Then  my  missus  she  giv'  a  sort  of  snort,  and 
walked  off. 

"  'And  now,'  says  I,  'per'aps  you  won't  mind 
letting  me  go  back  to  git  some  clothes  on.' 

"In  one  minute,'  he  says,  and  went  on  calmly 


246        A   TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

stowing  the  things  away,  and  when  he  finished, 
he  looks  at  me  quite  serious,  and  says,  'I'm 
obliged  to  you,'  he  says,  'and  I  hope  you  haven't 
ketched  cold  standing  with  your  feet  on  them 
bricks  and  nothing  much  on  you,'  he  says.  'But 
I  want  most  particular  to  arst  you  not  to  forget 
to  remember  about  that  bird  I  giv'  you,'  he  says. 
'You  call  it  a  jackdaw,  and  I've  no  particular 
objection  to  that,  only  don't  go  and  run  away 
with  the  idea  that  it's  just  an  or'nary  jackdaw. 
It's  a  different  sort,  and  you'll  come  to  know  its 
value  bime-by,  and  that  it  ain't  the  kind  of  bird 
you  can  buy  with  a  bit  of  bread  and  a  pinch  of 
tea,'  he  says.  'And  there's  something  else  you've 
got  to  think  of — that  wife  of  yours.  I've  been 
sort  of  married  myself  and  can  feel  for  you,'  he 
says.  'The  time  will  come  when  that  there 
bird's  pretty  little  ways  will  amuse  her,  and  last 
of  all  it'll  make  her  smile,  and  you'll  get  the 
benefit  of  that,'  he  says.  'And  you'll  remember 
the  bird  was  giv'  to  you  by  a  man  narned  Jones— 
that's  my  name,  Jones — walking  from  New- 
castle to  Dorchester,  looking  for  work.  A  poor 
man,  you'll  say,  down  on  his  luck,  but  not  one 
of  the  common  sort,  not  a  greedy,  selfish  man, 


A  STORY  OF  A  JACKDAW  247 

but  a  man  that's  always  trying  to  do  something 
to  make  others  happy,'  he  says. 

"And  after  that,  he  said,  'Good-bye,'  without 
a  smile,  and  walked  off. 

"And  there  at  the  door  I  stood,  I  don't  know 
how  long,  looking  after  him  going  down  the 
road.  Then  I  laughed ;  I  don't  know  that  I  ever 
laughed  so  much  in  my  life,  and  at  last  I  had  to 
sit  down  on  the  bricks  to  go  on  laughing  more 
comfortably,  until  the  missus  came  and  arst  me, 
sarcastic-like,  if  I'd  got  the  high-strikes,  and  if 
she'd  better  get  a  bucket  of  water  to  throw  over 
me. 

"I  says,  'No,  I  don't  want  no  water.  Just  let 
me  have  my  laugh  out  and  then  it'll  be  all  right.' 
Well,  I  don't  see  nothing  to  laugh  at,'  she  says. 
'And  I  s'pose  you  thought  you  giv'  him  a  penny. 
Well,  it  wasn't  a  penny,  it  was  a  florin/  she  says. 

"  'And  little  enough,  too,'  I  says.  'What  that 
man  said  to  me,  to  say  nothing  of  the  bird,  was 
worth  a  sovereign.  But  you  are  a  woman,  and 
can't  understand  that,'  I  says.  'No,'  she  says,  'I 
can't,  and  lucky  for  you,  or  we'd  'a'  been  in  the 
workhouse  before  now,'  she  says. 

"And  that's  how  I  got  the  bird." 


XXIX 

A  WONDERFUL  STORY  OF  A 
MACKEREL 

THE  angler  is  a  mighty  spinner  of  yarns,  but 
no  sooner  does  he  set  about  the  telling  than 
I,  knowing  him  of  old,  and  accounting  him  not 
an  uncommon  but  an  unconscionable  liar,  begin 
(as  Bacon  hath  it)  "to  droop  and  languish." 
Nor  does  the  languishing  end  with  the  story  if 
I  am  compelled  to  sit  it  out,  for  in  that  state  I 
continue  for  some  hours  after.  But  oh!  the  dif- 
ference when  someone  who  is  not  an  angler  re- 
lates a  fishing  adventure!  A  plain  truthful  man 
who  never  dined  at  an  anglers'  club,  nor  knows 
that  he  who  catches,  or  tries  to  catch  a  fish,  must 
tell  you  something  to  astonish  and  fill  you  with 
envy  and  admiration.  To  a  person  of  this  de- 
scription I  am  all  attention,  and  however  pro- 
saic and  even  dull  the  narrative  may  be,  it  fills 
me  with  delight,  and  sends  me  happy  to  bed 
and  (still  chuckling)  to  a  refreshing  sleep. 
Accordingly,  when  one  of  the  "commercials" 
248 


A  WONDERFUL  STORY  OF  A  MACKEREL    249 

in  the  coffee-room  of  the  Plymouth  Hotel  began 
to  tell  a  wonderful  story  of  a  mackerel  he  once 
caught  a  very  long  time  back,  I  immediately  put 
down  my  pen  so  as  to  listen  with  all  my  ears. 
For  he  was  about  the  last  person  one  would 
have  thought  of  associating  with  fish-catching — 
an  exceedingly  towny-looking  person  indeed, 
one  who  from  his  conversation  appeared  to 
know  nothing  outside  of  his  business.  He  was 
past  middle  age — oldish-looking  for  a  traveller 
— his  iron-grey  hair  brushed  well  up  to  hide  the 
baldness  on  top,  disclosing  a  pair  of  large  ears 
which  stood  out  like  handles;  a  hatchet  face 
with  parchment  skin,  antique  side  whiskers,  and 
gold-rimmed  glasses  on  his  large  beaky  nose.  He 
wore  the  whitest  linen  and  blackest,  glossiest 
broadcloth,  a  big  black  cravat,  diamond  stud  in 
his  shirt-front  in  the  old  fashion,  and  a  heavy 
gold  chain  with  a  spade  guinea  attached.  His 
get-up  and  general  appearance,  though  ancient, 
or  at  all  events  mid-Victorian,  proclaimed  him 
a  person  of  considerable  importance  in  his  voca- 
tion. 

He  had,  he  told  us  at  starting,  a  very  good 
customer  at  Bristol,  perhaps  the  best  he  ever 


2so       A  TRAVELLER  IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

had,  at  any  rate  the  one  who  had  stuck  longest  to 
him,  since  what  he  was  telling  us  happened 
about  the  year  1870.  He  went  to  Bristol  ex- 
pressly to  see  this  man,  expecting  to  get  a  good 
order  from  him,  but  when  he  arrived  and  saw 
the  wife,  and  asked  for  her  husband,  she  replied 
that  he  was  away  on  his  holiday  with  the  two 
little  boys.  It  was  a  great  disappointment,  for, 
of  course,  he  couldn't  get  an  order  from  her.1 
Confound  the  woman!  she  was  always  against 
him;  what  she  would  have  liked  was  to  have 
half  a  dozen  travellers  dangling  about  her,  so 
as  to  pit  one  against  another  and  distribute  the 
orders  among  them  just  as  flirty  females  distrib- 
ute their  smiles,  instead  of  putting  trust  in  one. 

Where  had  her  husband  gone  for  his  holiday? 
he  asked;  she  said  Weymouth  and  then  was 
sorry  she  had  let  it  out.  But  she  refused  to  give 
the  address.  "No,  no,"  she  said;  "he's  gone  to 
enjoy  himself,  and  mustn't  be  reminded  of  busi- 
ness till  he  gets  back." 

However,  he  resolved  to  follow  him  to  Wey- 
mouth on  the  chance  of  finding  him  there,  and 
accordingly  took  the  next  train  to  that  place. 
And,  he  added,  it  was  lucky  for  him  that  he  did 


A  WONDERFUL  STORY  OF  A  MACKEREL    251 

so,  for  he  very  soon  found  him  with  his  boys  on 
the  front,  and,  in  spite  of  what  she  said,  it  was 
not  with  this  man  as  it  was  with  so  many  others 
who  refuse  to  do  business  when  away  from  the 
shop.  On  the  contrary,  at  Weymouth  he  se- 
cured the  best  order  this  man  had  given  him  up 
to  that  time;  and  it  was  because  he  was  away 
from  his  wife,  who  had  always  contrived  to  be 
present  at  their  business  meetings,  and  was  very 
interfering,  and  made  her  husband  too  cautious 
in  buying. 

It  was  early  in  the  day  when  this  business  was 
finished.  "And  now,"  said  the  man  from  Bris- 
tol, who  was  in  a  sort  of  gay  holiday  mood, 
"what  are  you  going  to  do  with  yourself  for  the 
rest  of  the  day?" 

He  answered  that  he  was  going  to  take  the 
next  train  back  to  London.  He  had  finished 
with  Weymouth — there  was  no  other  customer 
there. 

Here  he  digressed  to  tell  us  that  he  was  a  be- 
ginner at  that  time  at  the  salary  of  a  pound  a 
week  and  fifteen  shillings  a  day  for  travelling 
expenses.  He  thought  this  a  great  thing  at  first; 
when  he  heard  what  he  was  to  get  he  walked 


2$2       A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

about  on  air  all  day  long,  repeating  to  himself, 
"Fifteen  shillings  a  day  for  expenses!"  It  was 
incredible;  he  had  been  poor,  earning  about  five 
shillings  a  week,  and  now  he  had  suddenly  come 
into  this  splendid  fortune.  It  wouldn't  be  much 
for  him  now!  He  began  by  spending  reck- 
lessly; and  in  a  short  time  discovered  that  the 
fifteen  shillings  didn't  go  far;  now  he  had  come 
to  his  senses  and  had  to  practise  a  rigid  economy. 
Accordingly,  he  thought  he  would  save  the  cost 
of  a  night's  lodging  and  go  back  to  town.  But 
the  Bristol  man  was  anxious  to  keep  him  and 
said  he  had  hired  a  man  and  boat  to  go  fishing 
with  the  boys, — why  couldn't  he  just  engage  a 
bedroom  for  the  night  and  spend  the  afternoon 
with  them? 

After  some  demur  he  consented,  and  took  his 
bag  to  a  modest  Temperance  Hotel,  where  he  se- 
cured a  room,  and  then,  protesting  he  had  never 
caught  a  fish  or  seen  one  caught  in  his  life,  he 
got  into  the  boat,  and  was  taken  into  the  bay 
where  he  was  to  have  his  first  and  only  experi- 
ence of  fishing.  Perhaps  it  was  no  great  thing, 
but  it  gave  him  something  to  remember  all  his 
life. 


A  WONDERFUL  STORY  OF  A  MACKEREL    253 

After  a  while  his  line  began  to  tremble  and 
move  about  in  an  extraordinary  way  with  sud- 
den little  tugs  which  were  quite  startling,  and  on 
pulling  it  in  he  found  he  had  a  mackerel  on  his 
hook.  He  managed  to  get  it  into  the  boat  all 
right  and  was  delighted  at  his  good  luck,  and 
still  more  at  the  sight  of  the  fish,  shining  like 
silver  and  showing  the  most  beautiful  colours. 
He  had  never  seen  anything  so  beautiful  in  his 
life!  Later,  the  same  thing  happened  again 
with  the  line  and  a  second  mackerel  was  caught, 
and  altogether  he  caught  three.  His  friend  also 
caught  a  few,  and  after  a  most  pleasant  and  ex- 
citing afternoon  they  returned  to  the  town  well 
pleased  with  their  sport.  His  friend  wanted  him 
to  take  a  share  of  the  catch,  and  after  a  little 
persuasion  he  consented  to  take  one,  and  he 
selected  the  one  he  had  caught  first,  just  because 
it  was  the  first  fish  he  had  ever  caught  in  his  life, 
and  it  had  looked  more  beautiful  than  any  other, 
so  would  probably  taste  better. 

Going  back  to  the  hotel  he  called  the  maid 
and  told  her  he  had  brought  in  a  mackerel  which 
he  had  caught  for  his  tea,  and  ordered  her  to 
have  it  prepared.  He  had  it  boiled  and  enjoyed 


254        A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

it  very  much,  but  on  the  following  morning 
when  the  bill  was  brought  to  him  he  found  that 
he  had  been  charged  two  shillings  for  fish. 

"Why,  what  does  this  item  mean?"  he  ex- 
claimed. "I've  had  no  fish  in  this  hotel  except 
a  mackerel  which  I  caught  myself  and  brought 
back  for  my  tea,  and  now  I'm  asked  to  pay  two 
shillings  for  it?  Just  take  the  bill  back  to  your 
mistress  and  tell  her  the  fish  was  mine — I  caught 
it  myself  in  the  Bay  yesterday  afternoon." 

The  girl  took  it  up,  and  by-and-by  returned 
and  said  her  mistress  had  consented  to  take 
threepence  off  the  bill  as  he  had  provided  the 
fish  himself. 

"No,"  he  said,  indignantly,  "I'll  have  nothing 
off  the  bill,  I'll  pay  the  full  amount,"  and  pay 
it  he  did  in  his  anger,  then  went  off  to  say  good- 
bye to  his  friend,  to  whom  he  related  the  case. 

His  friend,  being  in  the  same  hilarious 
humour  as  on  the  previous  day,  burst  out  laugh- 
ing and  made  a  good  deal  of  fun  over  the  mat- 
ter. 

That,  he  said,  was  the  whole  story  of  how  he 
went  fishing  and  caught  a  mackerel,  and  what 
came  of  it.  But  it  was  not  quite  all,  for  he  went 


A  WONDERFUL  STORY  OF  A  MACKEREL    255 

on  to  tell  us  that  he  still  visited  Bristol  regularly 
to  receive  big  and  ever  bigger  orders  from  that 
same  old  customer  of  his,  whose  business  had 
gone  on  increasing  ever  since;  and  invariably 
after  finishing  their  business  his  friend  remarks 
in  a  casual  sort  of  way:  "By  the  way,  old  man, 
do  you  remember  that  mackerel  you  caught  at 
Weymouth  which  you  had  for  tea,  and  were 
charged  two  shillings  for?"  "Then  he  laughs 
just  as  heartily  as  if  it  had  only  happened  yes- 
terday, and  I  leave  him  in  a  good  humour,  and 
say  to  myself:  'Now,  I'll  hear  no  more  about 
that  blessed  mackerel  till  I  go  round  to  Bristol 
again  in  three  months'  time.' ' 

"How  long  ago  did  you  say  it  was  since  you 
caught  the  mackerel?"  I  inquired. 

"About  forty  years." 

"Then,"  I  said,  "it  was  a  very  lucky  fish  for 
you — worth  more  perhaps  than  if  a  big  diamond 
had  been  found  in  its  belly.  The  man  had  got 
his  joke — the  one  joke  of  his  life  perhaps — and 
was  determined  to  stick  to  it,  and  that  kept  him 
faithful  to  you  in  spite  of  his  wife's  wish  to  dis- 
tribute their  orders  among  a  lot  of  travellers." 

He  replied  that  I  was  perhaps  right  and  that 


256       A  TRAVELLER  IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

it  had  turned  out  a  lucky  fish  for  him.  But  his 
old  customer,  though  his  business  was  big,  was 
not  so  important  to  him  now  when  he  had  big 
customers  in  most  of  the  large  towns  in  Eng- 
land, and  he  thought  it  rather  ridiculous  to  keep 
up  that  joke  so  many  years. 


XXX 

STRANGERS  YET 

THE  man  who  composed  that  familiar  de- 
lightful rhyme  about  blue  eyes  and  black, 
and  how  you  are  to  beware  of  the  hidden  knife 
in  the  one  case  and  of  a  different  sort  of  danger 
which  may  threaten  you  in  the  other,  must  have 
lived  a  good  long  time  ago,  or  else  be  a  very 
old  man.  Oh,  so  old,  thousands  of  years,  thou- 
sands of  years,  if  all  were  told.  And  he,  when 
he  exhibited  such  impartiality,  must  have  had 
other-coloured  eyes  himself.  Most  probably 
the  sheep  and  goat  eye,  one  which  no  person  in 
his  senses — except  an  anthropologist — can  clas- 
sify as  either  dark  or  light.  It  is  that  marma- 
lade yellow,  excessively  rare  in  this  country,  but 
not  very  uncommon  in  persons  of  Spanish  race. 
For  who  at  this  day,  this  age,  after  the  mixing 
together  of  the  hostile  races  has  been  going  on 
these  twenty  centuries  or  longer,  can  believe  that 
any  inherited  or  instinctive  animosity  can  still 

257 


258        A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

survive?  If  we  do  find  such  a  feeling  here  and 
there,  would  it  not  be  more  reasonable  to  regard 
it  as  an  individual  antipathy,  or  as  a  prejudice, 
imbibed  early  in  life  from  parents  or  others, 
which  endures  in  spite  of  reason,  long  after  its 
origin  had  been  forgotten? 

Nevertheless,  one  does  meet  with  cases  from 
time  to  time  which  do  throw  a  slight  shadow  of 
doubt  on  the  mind,  and  of  several  I  have  met 
I  will  here  relate  one. 

At  an  hotel  on  the  South  Coast  I  met  a  Miss 
Browne,  which  is  not  her  name,  and  I  rather 
hope  this  sketch  will  not  be  read  by  anyone 
nearly  related  to  her,  as  they  might  identify  her 
from  the  description.  A  middle-aged  lady  with 
a  brown  skin,  black  hair  and  dark  eyes,  an  oval 
face,  fairly  good-looking,  her  manner  lively  and 
attractive,  her  movements  quick  without  being 
abrupt  or  jerky.  She  was  highly  intelligent  and 
a  good  talker,  with  more  to  say  than  most 
women,  and  better  able  than  most  to  express 
herself.  We  were  at  the  same  small  table  and 
got  on  well  together,  as  I  am  a  good  listener  and 
she  knew — being  a  woman,  how  should  she  not? 
— that  she  interested  me. 


STRANGERS  YET  259 

One  day  at  our  table  the  conversation  hap- 
pened to  be  about  the  races  of  men  and  the  per- 
sistence of  racial  characteristics,  physical  and 
mental,  in  persons  of  mixed  descent.  The  sub- 
ject interested  her.  "What  would  you  call  me?" 
she  asked. 

"An  Iberian,"  I  returned. 

She  laughed  and  said :  "This  makes  the  third 
time  I  have  been  called  an  Iberian,  so  perhaps 
it  is  true,  and  I'm  curious  to  know  what  an 
Iberian  is,  and  why  I'm  called  an  Iberian.  Is 
it  because  I  have  something  of  a  Spanish  look?" 

I  answered  that  the  Iberians  were  the  ancient 
Britons,  a  dark-eyed,  brown-skinned  people  who 
inhabited  this  country  and  all  Southern  Europe 
before  the  invasion  of  the  blue-eyed  races;  that 
doubtless  there  had  been  an  Iberian  mixture  in 
her  ancestors,  perhaps  many  centuries  ago,  and 
that  these  peculiar  characters  had  come  out 
strongly  in  her;  she  had  the  peculiar  kind  of 
blood  in  her  veins  and  the  peculiar  sort  of  soul 
which  goes  with  the  blood. 

"But  what  a  mystery  it  is!"  she  exclaimed. 
"I  am  the  only  small  one  in  a  family  of  tall 
sisters.  My  parents  were  both  tall  and  light, 


260       A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

and  the  others  took  after  them.  I  was  small 
and  dark,  and  they  were  tall  blondes  with  blue 
eyes  and  pale  gold  hair.  And  in  disposition  I 
was  unlike  them  as  in  physique.  How  do  you 
account  for  it?" 

It  was  a  long  question,  I  said,  and  I  had  told 
her  all  I  could  about  it.  I  couldn't  go  further 
into  it;  I  was  too  ignorant.  I  had  just  touched 
on  the  subject  in  one  of  my  books.  It  was  in 
other  books,  with  reference  to  a  supposed  an- 
tagonism which  still  survives  in  blue-eyed  and 
dark-eyed  people. 

She  asked  me  to  give  her  the  titles  of  the 
books  I  spoke  of.  "You  imagine,  I  daresay," 
she  said,  "that  it  is  mere  idle  curiosity  on  my 
part.  It  isn't  so.  The  subject  has  a  deep  and 
painful  interest  for  me." 

That  was  all,  and  I  had  forgotten  all  about  the 
conversation  until  some  time  afterwards,  when 
I  had  a  letter  from  her  recalling  it.  I  quote 
one  passage  without  the  alteration  of  a  syllable : 

"Oh,  why  did  I  not  know  before,  when  I  was 
young,  in  the  days  when  my  beautiful  blue-eyed 
but  cruel  and  remorseless  mother  and  sisters 
made  my  life  an  inexplicable  grief  and  torment! 


STRANGERS  YET  261 

It  might  have  lifted  the  black  shadows  from 
my  youth  by  explaining  the  reason  of  their  per- 
secutions— it  might  have  taken  the  edge  from 
my  sufferings  by  showing  that  I  was  not  person- 
ally to  blame,  also  that  nothing  could  ever  ob- 
viate it,  that  I  but  wasted  my  life  and  broke 
my  heart  in  for  ever  vain  efforts  to  appease  an 
hereditary  enemy  and  oppressor." 

Cases  of  this  kind  cannot,  however,  appear 
conclusive.  The  cases  in  which  mother  and 
daughters  unite  in  persecuting  a  member  of  the 
family  are  not  uncommon.  I  have  known  sev- 
eral in  my  experience  in  which  respectable, 
well-to-do,  educated,  religious  people  have  dis- 
played a  perfectly  fiendish  animosity  against 
one  of  the  family.  In  all  these  cases  it  has  been 
mother  and  daughters  combining  against  one 
daughter,  and  so  far  as  one  can  see  into  the  mat- 
ter, the  cause  is  usually  to  be  traced  to  some 
strangeness  or  marked  peculiarity,  physical  or 
mental,  in  the  persecuted  one.  The  peculiarity 
may  be  a  beauty  of  disposition,  or  some  virtue 
or  rare  mental  quality  which  the  others  do  not 
possess. 

It  would  perhaps  be  worth  while  to  form  a 


262       A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

society  to  investigate  all  these  cases  of  persecu- 
tion in  families,  to  discover  whether  or  not  they 
afford  any  support  to  the  notion  of  an  inherited 
antagonism  of  dark  and  light  races.  The  An- 
thropological, Eugenic  and  Psychical  Research 
Societies  might  consider  the  suggestion. 


XXXI 

THE  RETURN  OF  THE  CHIFF-CHAFF 

(SPRING  SADNESS) 

ON  a  warm,  brilliant  morning  in  late  April 
I  paid  a  visit  to  a  shallow  lakelet  or  pond 
five  or  six  acres  in  extent  which  I  had  discov- 
ered some  weeks  before  hidden  in  a  depression 
in  the  land,  among  luxuriant  furze,  bramble, 
and  blackthorn  bushes.  Between  the  thickets 
the  boggy  ground  was  everywhere  covered  with 
great  tussocks  of  last  year's  dead  and  faded 
marsh  grass — a  wet,  rough,  lonely  place  where 
a  lover  of  solitude  need  have  no  fear  of  being 
intruded  on  by  a  being  of  his  own  species,  or 
even  a  wandering  moorland  donkey.  On  arriv- 
ing at  the  pond  I  was  surprised  and  delighted 
to  find  half  the  surface  covered  with  a  thick 
growth  of  bog-bean  just  coming  into  flower. 
The  quaint  three-lobed  leaves,  shaped  like  a 
grebe's  foot,  were  still  small,  and  the  flower- 

263 


264       A  TRAVELLER  IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

stocks,  thick  as  corn  in  a  field,  were  crowned 
with  pyramids  of  buds,  cream  and  rosy-red  like 
the  opening  dropwort  clusters,  and  at  the  lower 
end  of  the  spikes  were  the  full-blown  singular, 
snow-white,  cottony  flowers — our  strange  and 
beautiful  water  edelweiss. 

A  group  of  ancient,  gnarled  and  twisted  alder 
bushes,  with  trunks  like  trees,  grew  just  on  the 
margin  of  the  pond,  and  by-and-by  I  found  a 
comfortable  arm-chair  on  the  lower  stout  hori- 
zontal branches  overhanging  the  water,  and  on 
that  seat  I  rested  for  a  long  time,  enjoying  the 
sight  of  that  rare  unexpected  loveliness. 

The  chiff-chaff,  the  common  warbler  of  this 
moorland  district,  was  now  abundant,  more  so 
than  anywhere  else  in  England;  two  or  three 
were  flitting  about  among  the  alder  leaves 
within  a  few  feet  of  my  head,  and  a  dozen  at 
least  were  singing  within  hearing,  chiff-chaffing 
near  and  far,  their  notes  sounding  strangely  loud 
at  that  still,  sequestered  spot.  Listening  to  that 
insistent  sound  I  was  reminded  of  Warde  Fowl- 
er's words  about  the  sweet  season  which  brings 
new  life  and  hope  to  men,  and  how  a  seal  and 
sanction  is  put  on  it  by  that  same  small  bird's 


THE  RETURN  OF  THE   CHIFF-CHAFF       265 

clear  resonant  voice.  I  endeavoured  to  recall 
the  passage,  saying  to  myself  that  in  order  to 
enter  fully  into  the  feeling  expressed  it  is  some- 
times essential  to  know  an  author's  exact  words. 
Failing  in  this,  I  listened  again  to  the  bird,  then 
let  my  eyes  rest  on  the  expanse  of  red  and  cream- 
coloured  spikes  before  me,  then  on  the  masses 
of  flame-yellow  furze  beyond,  then  on  some- 
thing else.  I  was  endeavouring  to  keep  my  at- 
tention on  these  extraneous  things,  to  shut  my 
mind  resolutely  against  a  thought,  intolerably 
sad,  which  had  surprised  me  in  that  quiet  soli- 
tary place.  Surely,  I  said,  this  springtime  ver- 
dure and  bloom,  this  fragrance  of  the  furze,  the 
infinite  blue  of  heaven,  the  bell-like  double  note 
of  this  my  little  feathered  neighbour  in  the  alder 
tree,  flitting  hither  and  thither,  light  and  airy 
himself  as  a  wind-fluttered  alder  leaf — surely 
this  is  enough  to  fill  and  to  satisfy  any  heart, 
leaving  no  room  for  a  grief  so  vain  and  barren, 
which  nothing  in  nature  suggested!  That  it 
should  find  me  out  here  in  this  wilderness  of 
all  places — the  place  to  which  a  man  might 
come  to  divest  himself  of  himself — that  second 
self  which  he  has  unconsciously  acquired — to  be 


266        A   TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

like  the  trees  and  animals,  outside  of  the  sad 
atmosphere  of  human  life  and  its  eternal 
tragedy!  A  vain  effort  and  a  vain  thought,  since 
that  from  which  I  sought  to  escape  came  from 
nature  itself,  from  every  visible  thing;  every 
leaf  and  flower  and  blade  was  eloquent  of  it, 
and  the  very  sunshine,  that  gave  life  and  bril- 
liance to  all  things,  was  turned  to  darkness 
by  it. 

Overcome  and  powerless,  I  continued  sitting 
there  with  half-closed  eyes  until  those  sad 
images  of  lost  friends,  which  had  risen  with  so 
strange  a  suddenness  in  my  mind,  appeared 
something  more  than  mere  memories  and  men- 
tally-seen faces  and  forms,  seen  for  a  moment, 
then  vanishing.  They  were  with  me,  standing 
by  me,  almost  as  in  life;  and  I  looked  from  one 
to  another,  looking  longest  at  the  one  who  was 
the  last  to  go;  who  was  with  me  but  yesterday, 
as  it  seemed,  and  stood  still  in  our  walk  and 
turned  to  bid  me  listen  to  that  same  double 
note,  that  little  spring  melody  which  had  re- 
turned to  us;  and  who  led  me,  waist-deep  in  the 
flowering  meadow  grasses  to  look  for  this  same 
beautiful  white  flower  which  I  had  found  here, 


THE  RETURN  OF  THE   CHIFF-CHAFF      267 

and  called  it  our  "English  edelweiss."  How 
beautiful  it  all  was!  We  thought  and  felt  as 
one.  That  bond  uniting  us,  unlike  all  other 
bonds,  was  unbreakable  and  everlasting.  If  one 
had  said  that  life  was  uncertain  it  would  have 
seemed  a  meaningless  phrase.  Spring's  immor- 
tality was  in  us;  ever-living  earth  was  better 
than  any  home  in  the  stars  wThich  eye  hath  not 
seen  nor  heart  conceived.  Nature  was  all  in 
all;  we  worshipped  her  and  her  wordless  mes- 
sages in  our  hearts  were  sweeter  than  honey  and 
the  honeycomb. 

To  me,  alone  on  that  April  day,  alone  on  the 
earth  as  it  seemed  for  a  while,  the  sweet  was 
indeed  changed  to  bitter,  and  the  loss  of  those 
who  were  one  with  me  in  feeling,  appeared  to 
my  mind  as  a  monstrous  betrayal,  a  thing  un- 
natural, almost  incredible.  Could  I  any  longer 
love  and  worship  this  dreadful  power  that  made 
us  and  filled  our  hearts  with  gladness — could  I 
say  of  it,  "Though  it  slay  me  yet  will  I  trust  it?" 

By-and-by  the  tempest  subsided,  but  the 
clouds  returned  after  the  rain,  and  I  sat  on  in  a 
deep  melancholy,  my  mind  in  a  state  of  sus- 
pense. Then  little  by  little  the  old  influence 


268        A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

began  to  re-assert  itself,  and  it  was  as  if  one  was 
standing  there  by  me,  one  who  was  always  calm, 
who  saw  all  things  clearly,  who  regarded  me 
with  compassion  and  had  come  to  reason  with 
me.  "Come  now,"  it  appeared  to  say,  "open 
your  eyes  once  more  to  the  sunshine;  let  it  enter 
freely  and  fill  your  heart,  for  there  is  healing  in 
it  and  in  all  nature.  It  is  true  the  power  you 
have  worshipped  and  trusted  will  destroy  you, 
but  you  are  living  to-day  and  the  day  of  your 
end  will  be  determined  by  chance  only.  Until 
you  are  called  to  follow  them  into  that  'world 
of  light,'  or  it  may  be  of  darkness  and  oblivion, 
you  are  immortal.  Think  then  of  to-day, 
humbly  putting  away  the  rebellion  and  despond- 
ency corroding  your  life,  and  it  will  be  with 
you  as  it  has  been;  you  shall  know  again  the 
peace  which  passes  understanding,  the  old  inef- 
fable happiness  in  the  sights  and  sounds  of 
earth.  Common  things  shall  seem  rare  and 
beautiful  to  you.  Listen  to  the  chiff-chaff  in- 
geminating the  familiar  unchanging  call  and 
message  of  spring.  Do  you  know  that  this  frail 
feathered  mite  with  its  short,  feeble  wings  has 
come  back  from  an  immense  distance,  crossing 


THE  RETURN  OF  THE  CHIFF-CHAFF      269 

two  continents,  crossing  mountains,  deserts  il- 
limitable, and,  worst  of  all,  the  salt,  grey  desert 
of  the  sea.  North  and  north-east  winds  and 
snow  and  sleet  assailed  it  when,  weary  with  its 
long  journey,  it  drew  near  to  its  bourne,  and 
beat  it  back,  weak  and  chilled  to  its  little 
anxious  heart,  so  that  it  could  hardly  keep  itself 
from  falling  into  the  cold,  salt  waves.  Yet  no 
sooner  is  it  here  in  the  ancient  home  and  cradle 
of  its  race,  than,  all  perils  and  pains  forgot,  it 
begins  to  tell  aloud  the  overflowing  joy  of  the 
resurrection,  calling  earth  to  put  on  her  living 
garment,  to  rejoice  once  more  in  the  old  undy- 
ing gladness — that  small  trumpet  will  teach  you 
something.  Let  your  reason  serve  you  as  well 
as  its  lower  faculties  have  served  this  brave  little 
traveller  from  a  distant  land." 

Is  this  then  the  best  consolation  my  mysterious 
mentor  can  offer?  How  vain,  how  false  it  is! — 
how  little  can  reason  help  us!  The  small  bird 
exists  only  in  the  present;  there  is  no  past,  nor 
future,  nor  knowledge  of  death.  Its  every  ac- 
tion is  the  result  of  a  stimulus  from  outside;  its 
"bravery"  is  but  that  of  a  dead  leaf  or  ball  of 
thistle-down  carried  away  by  the  blast, 


2  70        A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

Is  there  no  escape,  then,  from  this  intolerable 
sadness — from  the  thought  of  springs  that  have 
been,  the  beautiful  multitudinous  life  that  has 
vanished?  Our  maker  and  mother  mocks  at  our 
efforts — at  our  philosophic  refuges,  and  sweeps 
them  away  with  a  wave  of  emotion.  And  yet 
there  is  deliverance,  the  old  way  of  escape 
which  is  ours,  whether  we  want  it  or  not.  Na- 
ture herself  in  her  own  good  time  heals  the 
wound  she  inflicts — even  this  most  grievous  in 
seeming  when  she  takes  away  from  us  the  faith 
and  hope  of  reunion  with  our  lost.  They  may 
be  in  a  world  of  light,  waiting  our  coming — we 
do  not  know;  but  in  that  place  they  are  unim- 
aginable, their  state  inconceivable.  They  were 
like  us,  beings  of  flesh  and  blood,  or  we  should 
not  have  loved  them.  If  we  cannot  grasp  their 
hands  their  continued  existence  is  nothing  to  us. 
Grief  at  their  loss  is  just  as  great  for  those  who 
have  kept  their  faith  as  for  those  who  have  lost 
it;  and  on  account  of  its  very  poignancy  it  can- 
not endure  in  either  case.  It  fades,  returning 
in  its  old  intensity  at  ever  longer  intervals  until 
it  ceases.  The  poet  of  nature  was  wrong  when 
he  said  that  without  his  faith  in  the  decay  of  his 


THE  RETURN  OF  THE   CHIFF-CHAFF      271 

senses  he  would  be  worse  than  dead,  echoing 
the  apostle  who  said  that  if  we  had  hope  in  this 
world  only  we  should  be  of  all  men  the  most 
miserable.  So,  too,  was  the  later  poet  wrong 
when  he  listened  to  the  waves  on  Dover  beach 
bringing  the  eternal  notes  of  sadness  in;  when 
he  saw  in  imagination  the  ebbing  of  the  great 
sea  of  faith  which  had  made  the  world  so  beau- 
tiful, in  its  withdrawal  disclosing  the  deserts 
drear  and  naked  shingles  of  the  world.  That 
desolation,  as  he  imagined  it,  which  made  him 
so  unutterably  sad,  was  due  to  the  erroneous  idea 
that  our  earthly  happiness  comes  to  us  from 
otherwhere,  some  region  outside  our  planet,  just 
as  one  of  our  modern  philosophers  has  imagined 
that  the  principle  of  life  on  earth  came  origi- 
nally from  the  stars. 

The  "naked  shingles  of  the  world"  is  but  a 
mood  of  our  transitional  day;  the  world  is  just 
as  beautiful  as  it  ever  was,  and  our  dead  as  much 
to  us  as  they  have  ever  been,  even  when  faith 
was  at  its  highest.  They  are  not  wholly,  irre- 
trievably lost,  even  when  we  cease  to  remember 
them,  when  their  images  come  no  longer  unbid- 
den to  our  minds.  They  are  present  in  nature: 


272        A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

through  ourselves,  receiving  but  what  we  give, 
they  have  become  part  and  parcel  of  it  and  give 
it  an  expression.  As  when  the  rain  clouds  dis- 
perse and  the  sun  shines  out  once  more,  heaven 
and  earth  are  filled  with  a  chastened  light,  sweet 
to  behold  and  very  wonderful,  so  because  of  our 
lost  ones,  because  of  the  old  grief  at  their  loss, 
the  visible  world  is  touched  with  a  new  light,  a 
tenderness  and  grace  and  beauty  not  its  own. 


XXXII 
A  WASP  AT  TABLE 

EVEN  to  a  naturalist  with  a  tolerant  feeling 
for  all  living  things,  both  great  and  small, 
it  is  not  always  an  unmixed  pleasure  to  have  a 
wasp  at  table.  I  have  occasionally  felt  a  con- 
siderable degree  of  annoyance  at  the  presence 
of  a  self-invited  guest  of  that  kind. 

Some  time  ago  when  walking  I  sat  down  at 
noon  on  a  fallen  tree-trunk  to  eat  my  luncheon, 
which  consisted  of  a  hunk  of  cake  and  some 
bananas.  The  wind  carried  the  fragrance  of  the 
fruit  into  the  adjacent  wood,  and  very  soon 
wasps  began  to  arrive,  until  there  were  fifteen 
or  twenty  about  me.  They  were  so  aggressive 
and  greedy,  almost  following  every  morsel  I 
took  into  my  mouth,  that  I  determined  to  let 
them  have  as  much  as  they  wanted — and  some- 
thing more!  I  proceeded  to  make  a  mash  of 
the  ripest  portions  of  the  fruit  mixed  with 
whisky  from  my  pocket-flask,  and  spread  it 

273 


274        A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

nicely  on  the  bark.  At  once  they  fell  on  it  with 
splendid  appetites,  but  to  my  surprise  the  alco- 
hol produced  no  effect.  I  have  seen  big  locusts 
and  other  important  insects  tumbling  about  and 
acting  generally  as  if  demented  after  a  few  sips 
of  rum  and  sugar,  but  these  wasps,  when  they 
had  had  their  full  of  banana  and  whisky,  buzzed 
about  and  came  and  went  and  quarrelled  with 
one  another  just  as  usual,  and  when  I  parted 
from  them  there  was  not  one  of  the  company 
who  could  be  said  to  be  the  worse  for  liquor. 
Probably  there  is  no  more  steady-headed  in- 
sect than  the  wasp,  unless  it  be  his  noble  cousin, 
and  prince,  the  hornet,  who  has  a  quite  human- 
like unquenchable  thirst  for  beer  and  cider. 

But  the  particular  wasp  at  table  I  had  in  my 
mind  remains  to  be  spoken  of.  I  was  lunching 
at  the  house  of  a  friend,  the  vicar  of  a  lonely 
parish  in  Hampshire,  and  besides  ourselves 
there  were  five  ladies,  four  of  them  young,  at 
our  round  table.  The  window  stood  open,  and 
by-and-by  a  wasp  flew  in  and  began  to  investi- 
gate the  dishes,  the  plates,  then  the  eaters  them- 
selves, impartially  buzzing  before  each  face  in 
turn.  On  his  last  round,  before  taking  his  de- 


A  WASP  AT  TABLE  275 

parture,  he  continued  to  buzz  so  long  before  my 
face,  first  in  front  of  one  eye  then  the  other,  as 
if  to  make  sure  that  they  were  fellows  and  had 
the  same  expression,  that  I  at  length  impatiently 
remarked  that  I  did  not  care  for  his  too  flatter- 
ing attentions.  And  that  was  really  the  only 
inconsiderate  or  inhospitable  word  his  visit  had 
called  forth.  Yet  there  were,  I  have  said,  five 
ladies  present!  They  had  neither  welcomed  nor 
repelled  him,  and  had  not  regarded  him;  and 
although  it  was  impossible  to  be  unconscious  of 
his  presence  at  table,  it  was  as  if  he  had  not  been 
there.  But  then  these  ladies  were  cyclists:  one, 
in  addition  to  the  beautiful  brown  colour  with 
which  the  sun  had  painted  her  face,  showed 
some  dark  and  purple  stains  on  cheek  and  fore- 
head— marks  of  a  resent  dangerous  collision 
with  a  stone  wall  at  the  foot  of  a  steep  hill. 

Here  I  had  intended  telling  about  other  meet- 
ings with  other  wasps,  but  having  touched  on  a 
subject  concerning  which  nothing  is  ever  said 
and  volumes  might  be  written — namely,  the 
part  played  by  the  bicycle  in  the  emancipation 
of  women — I  will  go  on  with  it.  That  they  are 
not  really  emancipated  doesn't  matter,  since 


276       A  TRAVELLER  IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

they  move  towards  that  goal,  and  doubtless  they 
would  have  gone  on  at  the  same  old,  almost  im- 
perceptible rate  for  long  years  but  for  the  sud- 
den impulse  imparted  by  the  wheel.  Middle- 
aged  people  can  recall  how  all  England  held  up 
its  hands  and  shouted  "No,  no!"  from  shore  to 
shore  at  the  amazing  and  upsetting  spectacle  of 
a  female  sitting  astride  on  a  safety  machine,  in- 
decently moving  her  legs  up  and  down  just  like 
a  man.  But  having  tasted  the  delights  of  swift 
easy  motion,  imparted  not  by  any  extraneous 
agency,  but — oh,  sweet  surprise! — by  her  own 
in-dwelling  physical  energy,  she  refused  to  get 
off.  By  staying  on  she  declared  her  independ- 
ence; and  we  who  were  looking  on — some  of  us 
— rejoiced  to  see  it;  for  did  we  not  also  see, 
when  these  venturesome  leaders  returned  to  us 
from  careering  unattended  over  the  country, 
when  easy  motion  had  tempted  them  long  dis- 
tances into  strange,  lonely  places,  where  there 
was  no  lover  nor  brother  nor  any  chivalrous 
person  to  guard  and  rescue  them  from  innum- 
erable perils — from  water  and  fire,  mad  bulls 
and  ferocious  dogs,  and  evil-minded  tramps  and 
drunken,  dissolute  men,  and  from  all  venomous, 


A  WASP  AT  TABLE  277 

stinging,  creeping,  nasty,  horrid  things — did  we 
not  see  that  they  were  no  longer  the  same  beings 
we  had  previously  known,  that  in  their  long 
flights  in  heat  and  cold  and  rain  and  wind  and 
dust  they  had  shaken  off  some  ancient  weakness 
that  was  theirs,  that  without  loss  of  femininity 
they  had  become  more  like  ourselves  in  the  sense 
that  they  were  more  self-centred  and  less  irra- 
tional? 

But  women,  alas !  can  seldom  follow  up  a  vic- 
tory. They  are,  as  even  the  poet  when  most 
anxious  to  make  the  best  of  them  mournfully 
confesses: 

variable  as  the  shade 
By  the  light  quivering  aspen  made. 

Inconstant  in  everything,  they  soon  cast  aside 
the  toy  which  had  taught  them  so  great  a  lesson 
and  served  them  so  well,  carrying  them  so  far 
in  the  direction  they  wished  to  go.  And  no 
sooner  had  they  cast  it  aside  than  a  fresh  toy, 
another  piece  of  mechanism,  came  on  the  scene 
to  captivate  their  hearts,  and  instead  of  a  help, 
to  form  a  hindrance.  The  motor  not  only  car- 
ried them  back  over  all  the  ground  they  had 
covered  on  the  bicycle,  but  further  still,  almost 


278        A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

back  to  the  times  of  chairs  and  fans  and  smell- 
ing-salts and  sprained  ankles  at  Lyme  Regis.  A 
painful  sight  was  the  fair  lady  not  yet  forty  and 
already  fat,  overclothed  and  muffled  up  in 
heavy  fabrics  and  furs,  a  Pekinese  clasped  in 
her  arms,  reclining  in  her  magnificent  forty- 
horse-power  car  with  a  man  (Homo  sapiens) 
in  livery  to  drive  her  from  shop  to  shop  and 
house  to  house.  One  could  shut  one's  eyes  until 
it  passed — shut  them  a  hundred  or  five  hundred 
times  a  day  in  every  thoroughfare  in  every  town 
in  England;  but  alas!  one  couldn't  shut  out  the 
fact  that  this  spectacle  had  fascinated  and  made 
captive  the  soul  of  womankind,  that  it  was  now 
their  hope,  their  dream,  their  beautiful  ideal — 
the  one  universal  ideal  that  made  all  women 
sisters,  from  the  greatest  ladies  in  the  land  down- 
wards, and  still  down,  from  class  to  class,  even 
to  the  semi-starved  ragged  little  pariah  girl 
scrubbing  the  front  steps  of  a  house  in  Mean 
Street  for  a  penny. 

The  splendid  spectacle  has  now  been  removed 
from  their  sight,  but  is  it  out  of  mind?  Are 
they  not  waiting  and  praying  for  the  war  to  end 
so  that  there  may  be  petrol  to  buy  and  men  re- 


A  WASP  AT  TABLE  279 

turned  from  the  front  to  cast  off  their  blood- 
stained clothes  and  wash  and  bleach  their 
blackened  faces,  to  put  themselves  in  a  pretty 
livery  and  drive  the  ladies  and  their  Pekinese 
once  more? 

A  friend  of  mine  once  wrote  a  charming 
booklet  entitled  Wheel  Magic,  which  was  all 
about  his  rambles  on  the  machine  and  its  effect 
on  him.  He  is  not  an  athlete — on  the  contrary 
he  is  a  bookish  man  who  has  written  books 
enough  to  fill  a  cart,  and  has  had  so  much  to  do 
with  books  all  his  life  that  one  might  imagine 
he  had  by  some  strange  accident  been  born  in 
the  reading-room  of  the  British  Museum;  or 
that  originally  he  had  actually  been  a  book- 
worm, a  sort  of  mite,  spontaneously  engendered 
between  the  pages  of  a  book,  and  that  the  super- 
natural being  who  presides  over  the  reading- 
room  had,  as  a  little  pleasantry,  transformed 
him  into  a  man  so  as  to  enable  him  to  read  the 
books  on  which  he  had  previously  nourished 
himself. 

I  can't  follow  my  friend's  wanderings  and  ad- 
ventures as,  springing  out  of  his  world  of  books, 
he  flits  and  glides  like  a  vagrant,  swift-winged, 


28o       A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

irresponsible  butterfly  about  the  land,  sipping 
the  nectar  from  a  thousand  flowers  and  doing 
his  hundred  miles  in  a  day  and  feeling  all  the 
better  for  it,  for  this  was  a  man's  book,  and  the 
wheel  and  its  magic  was  never  a  necessity  in 
man's  life.  But  it  has  a  magic  of  another  kind 
for  woman,  and  I  wish  that  some  woman  of 
genius  would  arise  and,  inspired  perhaps  by  the 
ghost  of  Benjamin  Ward  Richardson  in  his  pro- 
phetic mood,  tell  of  this  magic  to  her  sisters. 
Tell  them,  if  they  are  above  labour  in  the  fields 
or  at  the  wash-tub,  that  the  wheel,  without  fa- 
tiguing, will  give  them  the  deep  breath  which 
will  purify  the  blood,  invigorate  the  heart,  stif- 
fen the  backbone,  harden  the  muscles;  that  the 
mind  will  follow  and  accommodate  itself  to 
these  physical  changes;  finally,  that  the  wheel 
will  be  of  more  account  to  them  than  all  the 
platforms  in  the  land,  and  clubs  of  all  the  pion- 
eers and  colleges,  all  congresses,  titles,  honours, 
votes,  and  all  the  books  that  have  been  or  ever 
will  be  written. 


XXXIII 
WASPS  AND  MEN 

I  NOW  find  that  I  must  go  back  to  the  sub- 
ject of  my  last  paper  on  the  wasp  in  order 
to  define  my  precise  attitude  towards  that  insect. 
Then,  too,  there  was  another  wasp  at  table,  not 
in  itself  a  remarkably  interesting  incident,  but 
I  am  anxious  to  relate  it  for  the  following  rea- 
son. 

If  there  is  one  sweetest  thought,  one  most 
cherished  memory  in  a  man's  mind,  especially 
if  he  be  a  person  of  gentle  pacific  disposition, 
whose  chief  desire  is  to  live  in  peace  and  amity 
with  all  men,  it  is  the  thought  and  recollection 
of  a  good  fight  in  which  he  succeeded  in  de- 
molishing his  adversary.  If  his  fights  have  been 
rare  adventures  and  in  most  cases  have  gone 
against  him,  so  much  the  more  will  he  rejoice 
in  that  one  victory. 

It  chanced  that  a  wasp  flew  into  the  breakfast 
room  of  a  country  house  in  which  I  was  a  guest, 

281 


282       A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

when  we  were  all — about  fourteen  in  number, 
mostly  ladies,  young  and  middle-aged — seated 
at  the  table.  The  wasp  went  his  rounds  in  the 
usual  way,  dropping  into  this  or  that  plate  or 
dish,  feeling  foods  with  his  antenna?  or  tasting 
with  his  tongue,  but  staying  nowhere,  and  as  he 
moved  so  did  the  ladies,  starting  back  with  little 
screams  and  exclamations  of  disgust  and  appre- 
hension. For  these  ladies,  it  hardly  need  be 
said,  were  not  cyclists.  Then  the  son  of  the 
house,  a  young  gentleman  of  twenty-two,  a 
footballer  and  general  athlete,  got  up,  pushed 
back  his  chair  and  said:  "Don't  worry,  I'll  soon 
settle  his  hash." 

Then  I  too  rose  from  my  seat,  for  I  had  made 
a  vow  not  to  allow  a  wasp  to  be  killed  unneces- 
sarily in  my  presence. 

"Leave  it  to  me,  please,"  I  said,  "and  I'll  put 
him  out  in  a  minute." 

"No,  sit  down,"  he  returned.  "I  have  said 
I'm  going  to  kill  it." 

"You  shall  not,"  I  returned;  and  then  the  two 
of  us,  serviettes  in  hand,  went  for  the  wasp,  who 
got  frightened  and  flew  all  round  the  room,  we 
after  it.  After  some  chasing  he  rose  high  and 


WASPS  AND   MEN  283 

then  made  a  dash  at  the  window,  but  instead 
of  making  its  escape  at  the  lower  open  part, 
struck  the  glass. 

"Now  I've  got  him!"  cried  my  sportsman  in 
great  glee;  but  he  had  not  got  him,  for  I  closed 
with  him,  and  we  swayed  about  and  put  forth  all 
our  strength,  and  finally  came  down  with  a  crash 
on  a  couch  under  the  window.  Then  after 
some  struggling  I  succeeded  in  getting  on  top, 
and  with  my  right  hand  on  his  face  and  my  knee 
on  his  body  to  keep  him  pressed  down,  I  man- 
aged with  my  left  hand  to  capture  the  wasp  and 
put  him  out. 

Then  we  got  up — he  with  a  scarlet  face,  furi- 
ous at  being  baulked;  but  he  was  a  true  sports- 
man, and  without  one  word  went  back  to  his  seat 
at  the  table. 

Undoubtedly  it  was  a  disgraceful  scene  in  a 
room  full  of  ladies,  but  he,  not  I,  provoked  it 
and  was  the  ruffian,  as  I'm  sure  he  will  be  ready 
to  confess  if  he  ever  reads  this. 

But  why  all  this  fuss  over  a  wasp's  life,  and 
in  such  circumstances,  in  a  room  full  of  nervous 
ladies,  in  a  house  where  I  was  a  guest?  It  was 
not  that  I  care  more  for  a  wasp  than  for  any 


284        A   TRAVELLER   IN   LITTLE   THINGS 

other  living  creature — I  don't  love  them  in  the 
St.  Francis  way;  the  wasp  is  not  my  little  sister; 
but  I  hate  to  see  any  living  creature  unneces- 
sarily, senselessly,  done  to  death.  There  are 
other  creatures  I  can  see  killed  without  a  qualm 
— flies,  for  instance,  especially  houseflies  and 
the  big  blue-bottle;  these  are,  it  was  formerly 
believed,  the  progeny  of  Satan,  and  modern  sci- 
entists are  inclined  to  endorse  that  ancient  no- 
tion. The  wasp  is  a  redoubtable  fly-killer,  and 
apart  from  his  merits,  he  is  a  perfect  and  beau- 
tiful being,  and  there  is  no  more  sense  in  killing 
him  than  in  destroying  big  game  and  a  thousand 
beautiful  wild  creatures  that  are  harmless  to 
man.  Yet  this  habit  of  killing  a  wasp  is  so  com- 
mon, ingrained  as  it  were,  as  to  be  almost  uni- 
versal among  us,  and  is  found  in  the  gentlest  and 
humanest  person,  and  even  the  most  spiritual- 
minded  men  come  to  regard  it  as  a  sort  of  re- 
ligious duty  and  exercise,  as  the  incident  I  am 
going  to  relate  will  show. 

I  came  to  Salisbury  one  day  to  find  it  full  of 
visitors,  but  I  succeeded  in  getting  a  room  in  one 
of  the  small  family  hotels.  I  was  told  by  the 
landlord  that  a  congress  was  being  held,  got  up 


WASPS  AND  MEN  285 

by  the  Society  for  the  pursuit  or  propagation  of 
Holiness,  and  that  delegates,  mostly  evangelical 
clergymen  and  ministers  of  the  gospel  of  all  de- 
nominations, with  many  lay  brothers,  had  come 
in  from  all  over  the  kingdom  and  were  holding 
meetings  every  day  and  all  day  long  at  one  of 
the  large  halls.  The  three  bedrooms  on  the  same 
floor  with  mine,  he  said,  were  all  occupied  by 
delegates  who  had  travelled  from  the  extreme 
north  of  England. 

In  the  evening  I  met  these  three  gentlemen 
and  heard  all  about  their  society  and  congress 
and  its  aim  and  work  from  them. 

Next  morning  at  about  half-past  six  I  was 
roused  from  sleep  by  a  tremendous  commotion  in 
the  room  adjoining  mine:  cries  and  shouts,  hur- 
ried trampings  over  the  floor,  blows  on  walls  and 
windows  and  the  crash  of  overthrown  furniture. 
However,  before  I  could  shake  my  sleep  off  and 
get  up  to  find  out  the  cause,  there  were  shouts 
of  laughter,  a  proof  that  no  one  had  been  killed 
or  seriously  injured,  and  I  went  to  sleep  again. 

At  breakfast  we  met  once  mo  re,  and  I  was  asked 
if  I  had  been  much  disturbed  by  the  early  morn- 
ing noise  and  excitement.  They  proceeded  to 


286        A   TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

explain  that  a  wasp  had  got  into  the  room  of 
their  friend — indicating  the  elderly  gentleman 
who  had  taken  the  head  of  the  table;  and  as  he 
was  an  invalid  and  afraid  of  being  stung,  he  had 
shouted  to  them  to  come  to  his  aid.  They  had 
tumbled  out  of  bed  and  rushed  in,  and  before 
beginning  operations  had  made  him  cover  his 
face  and  head  with  the  bedclothes,  after  which 
they  started  hunting  the  wasp.  But  he  was  too 
clever  for  them.  They  threw  things  at  him  and 
struck  at  him  with  their  garments,  pillows,  slip- 
pers, whatever  came  to  hand,  and  still  he  es- 
caped, and  in  rushing  round  in  their  excitement 
everything  in  the  room  except  the  bedstead  was 
overthrown.  At  last  the  wasp,  tired  out  or  ter- 
rified dropped  to  the  floor,  and  they  were  on  him 
like  a  shot  and  smashed  him  with  the  slippers 
they  had  in  their  hands. 

"And  you  call  yourselves  religious  men!"  I 
remarked  when  they  had  finished  their  story 
and  looked  at  me  expecting  me  to  say  some- 
thing. 

They  stared  astonished  at  me,  then  exchanged 
glances  and  burst  out  laughing,  and  laughed  as 
if  they  had  heard  something  too  excruciatingly 


WASPS  AND  MEN  287 

funny.  The  elderly  clergyman  who  had  been 
saved  from  the  winged  man-eating  dragon  that 
had  invaded  his  room  managed  at  last  to  recover 
his  gravity,  and  his  friends  followed  suit;  they 
then  all  three  silently  looked  at  me  again  as  if 
they  expected  to  hear  something  more. 

Not  to  disappoint  them,  I  started  telling  them 
about  the  life  and  work  of  a  famous  nobleman, 
one  of  England's  great  pro-consuls,  who  for 
many  years  had  ruled  over  various  countries  in 
distant  regions  of  the  earth,  and  many  barbar- 
ous and  semi-savage  nations,  by  whom  he  was 
regarded,  for  his  wisdom  and  justice  and  sym- 
pathy with  the  people  he  governed,  almost  as 
a  god.  This  great  man,  who  was  now  living  in 
retirement  at  home,  had  just  founded  a  Society 
for  the  Protection  of  Wasps,  and  had  so  far 
admitted  two  of  his  friends  who  were  in  sympa- 
thy with  his  objects  to  membership.  As  soon  as 
I  heard  of  the  society  I  had  sent  in  an  applica- 
tion to  be  admitted,  too,  and  felt  it  would  be 
a  proud  day  for  me  if  the  founder  considered 
me  worthy  of  being  the  fourth  member. 

Having  concluded  my  remarks,  the  three  re- 
ligious gentlemen,  who  had  listened  attentively 


288        A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

and  seriously  to  my  praises  of  the  great  pro- 
consul, once  more  exchanged  glances  and  again 
burst  out  laughing,  and  continued  laughing, 
rocking  in  their  chairs  with  laughter,  until  they 
could  laugh  no  more  for  exhaustion,  and  the 
elderly  gentleman  removed  his  spectacles  to 
wipe  the  tears  from  his  eyes. 

Such  extravagant  mirth  surprised  me  in  that 
grey-haired  man  who  was  manifestly  in  very 
bad  health,  yet  had  travelled  over  three  hundred 
miles  from  his  remote  Cumberland  parish  to 
give  the  benefit  of  his  burning  thoughts  to  his 
fellow-seekers  after  holiness  congregated  at  Sal- 
isbury from  all  parts  of  the  country. 

The  gust  of  merriment  having  blown  its  fill, 
ending  quite  naturally  in  "minute  drops  from 
off  the  eaves,"  I  gravely  wished  them  good-bye 
and  left  the  room.  They  did  not  know,  they 
never  suspected  that  the  amusement  had  been  on 
both  sides,  and  that  despite  their  laughter  it  had 
been  ten  times  greater  on  mine  than  on  theirs. 

I  can't  in  conclusion  resist  the  temptation  to 
tell  just  one  more  wasp  incident,  although  I  fear 
it  will  hurt  the  tender-hearted  and  religious 
reader's  susceptibilities  more  than  any  of  those 


WASPS  AND  MEN  289 

I  have  already  told.    But  it  will  be  told  briefly, 
without  digression  and  moralisings. 

We  have  come  to  regard  Nature  as  a  sort  of 
providence  who  is  mindful  of  us  and  recom- 
penses us  according  to  what  our  lives  are — 
whether  we  worship  her  and  observe  her  ordi- 
nances or  find  our  pleasure  in  breaking  them 
and  mocking  her  who  will  not  be  mocked.  But 
it  is  sad  for  those  who  have  the  feeling  of  kin- 
ship for  all  living  things,  both  great  and  small, 
from  the  whale  and  the  elephant  down  even  to 
the  harvest  mouse  and  beetle  and  humble  earth- 
worm, to  know  that  killing — killing  for  sport  or 
fun — is  not  forbidden  in  her  decalogue.  If  the 
killing  at  home  is  not  sufficient  to  satisfy  a  man, 
he  can  transport  himself  to  the  Dark  Continent 
and  revel  in  the  slaughter  of  all  the  greatest 
and  noblest  forms  of  life  on  the  globe.  There 
is  no  crime  and  no  punishment  and  no  comfort 
to  those  who  are  looking  on,  except  some  on  ex- 
ceedingly rare  occasion  when  we  receive  a  thrill 
of  joy  at  the  lamentable  tidings  of  the  violent 
death  of  some  noble  young  gentleman  beloved 
of  everybody  and  a  big-game  hunter,  who  was 
elephant-shooting,  when  one  of  the  great  brutes, 


290       A  TRAVELLER  IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

stung  to  madness  by  his  wounds,  turned,  even 
when  dying,  on  his  persecutor  and  trampled 
him  to  death. 

In  a  small,  pretty,  out-of-the-world  village  in 
the  West  of  England  I  made  the  acquaintance 
of  the  curate,  a  boyish  young  fellow  not  long 
from  Oxford,  who  was  devoted  to  sport  and  a 
great  killer.  He  was  not  satisfied  with  cricket 
and  football  in  their  seasons  and  golf  and  lawn 
tennis — he  would  even  descend  to  croquet  when 
there  was  nothing  else — and  boxing  and  fencing, 
and  angling  in  the  neighbouring  streams,  but  he 
had  to  shoot  something  every  day  as  well.  And 
it  was  noticed  by  the  villagers  that  the  shooting 
fury  was  always  strongest  on  him  on  Mondays. 
They  said  it  was  a  reaction;  that  after  the  re- 
straint of  Sunday  with  its  three  services,  espe- 
cially the  last  when  he  was  permitted  to  pour  out 
his  wild  curatical  eloquence,  the  need  of  doing 
something  violent  and  savage  was  most  power- 
ful ;  that  he  had,  so  to  say,  to  wash  out  the  Sun- 
day taste  with  blood. 

One  August,  on  one  of  these  Mondays,  he  was 
dodging  along  a  hedge-side  with  his  gun  trying 
to  get  a  shot  at  some  bird,  when  he  unfortunately 


WASPS  AND  MEN  291 

thrust  his  foot  into  a  populous  wasps'  nest,  and 
the  infuriated  wasps  issued  in  a  cloud  and  in- 
flicted many  stings  on  his  head  and  face  and 
neck  and  hands,  and  on  other  parts  of  his  anat- 
omy where  they  could  thrust  their  little  needles 
through  his  clothes. 

This  mishap  was  the  talk  of  the  village. 
"Never  mind,"  they  said  cheerfully — they  were 
all  very  cheerful  over  it — "he's  a  good  sports- 
man, and  like  all  of  that  kind,  hard  as  nails,  and 
he'll  soon  be  all  right,  making  a  joke  of  it." 

The  result  "proved  the  rogues,  they  lied," 
that  he  was  not  hard  as  nails,  but  from  that  day 
onwards  was  a  very  poor  creature  indeed.  The 
brass  and  steel  wires  in  his  system  had  degen- 
erated into  just  those  poor  little  soft  grey  threads 
which  others  have  and  are  subject  to  many  fan- 
tastical ailments.  He  fell  into  a  nervous  con- 
dition and  started  and  blanched  and  was  con- 
fused when  suddenly  hailed  or  spoken  to  even 
by  some  harmless  old  woman.  He  trembled  at 
a  shadow,  and  the  very  sight  and  sound  of  a 
wasp  in  the  breakfast  room  when  he  was  trying 
to  eat  a  little  toast  and  marmalade  filled  him, 
thrilled  him,  with  fantastic  terrors  never  felt 


2Q2       A  TRAVELLER  IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

before.  And  in  vain  to  still  the  beating  of  his 
heart  he  would  sit  repeating:  "It's  only  a  wasp 
and  nothing  more."  Then  some  of  the  par- 
ishioners who  loved  animals,  for  there  are  usu- 
ally one  or  two  like  that  in  a  village,  began  to 
say  that  it  was  a  "judgment"  on  him,  that  old 
Mother  Nature,  angry  at  the  persecutions  of  her 
feathered  children  by  this  young  cleric  who  was 
supposed  to  be  a  messenger  of  mercy,  had  re- 
venged herself  on  him  in  that  way,  using  her 
little  yellow  insects  as  her  ministers. 


XXXIV 
IN   CHITTERNE    CHURCHYARD 


HITTERNE  is  one  of  those  small  out-of- 
the-world  villages  in  the  south  Wiltshire 
downs  which  attract  one  mainly  because  of  their 
isolation  and  loneliness  and  their  unchangeable- 
ness.  Here,  however,  you  discover  that  there 
has  been  an  important  change  in  comparatively 
recent  years  —  some  time  during  the  first  half  of 
the  last  century.  Chitterne,  like  most  villages, 
possesses  one  church,  a  big  building  with  a  tall 
spire  standing  in  its  central  part.  Before  it  was 
built  there  were  two  churches  and  two  Chit- 
ternes  —  two  parishes  with  one  village,  each  with 
its  own  proper  church.  These  were  situated  at 
opposite  ends  of  the  one  long  street,  and  were 
small  ancient  buildings,  each  standing  in  its  own 
churchyard.  One  of  these  disused  burying- 
places,  with  a  part  of  the  old  building  still  stand- 
ing in  it,  is  a  peculiarly  attractive  spot,  all  the 
more  so  because  of  long  years  of  neglect  and  of 

•293 


294        A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

ivy,  bramble,  and  weed  and  flower  of  many 
kinds  that  flourish  in  it,  and  have  long  obliter- 
ated the  mounds  and  grown  over  the  few  tombs 
and  headstones  that  still  exist  in  the  ground. 

It  was  an  excessively  hot  August  afternoon 
when  I  last  visited  Chitterne,  and,  wishing  to 
rest  for  an  hour  before  proceeding  on  my  way, 
I  went  to  this  old  churchyard,  naturally  think- 
ing that  I  should  have  it  all  to  myself.  But  I 
found  two  persons  there,  both  old  women  of  the 
peasant  class,  meanly  dressed;  yet  it  was  evident 
they  had  their  good  clothes  on  and  were  neat 
and  clean,  each  with  a  basket  on  her  arm,  prob- 
ably containing  her  luncheon.  For  they  were 
only  visitors  and  strangers  there,  and  strangers 
to  one  another  as  they  were  to  me — that,  too,  I 
could  guess:  also  that  they  had  come  there  with 
some  object — perhaps  to  find  some  long  unvis- 
ited  grave,  for  they  were  walking  about,  cross- 
ing and  recrossing  each  other's  track,  pausing 
from  time  to  time  to  look  round,  then  pulling 
the  ivy  aside  from  some  old  tomb  and  reading 
or  trying  to  read  the  worn,  moss-grown  inscrip- 
tion. I  began  to  watch  their  movements  with 
growing  interest,  and  could  see  that  they,  too, 


IN  CHITTERNE  CHURCHYARD  295 

were  very  much  interested  in  each  other,  al- 
though for  a  long  time  they  did  not  exchange  a 
word.  Presently  I,  too,  fell  to  examining  the 
gravestones,  just  to  get  near  them,  and  while 
pretending  to  be  absorbed  in  the  inscriptions  I 
kept  a  sharp  eye  on  their  movements.  They 
took  no  notice  of  me.  I  was  nothing  to  them — 
merely  one  of  another  class,  a  foreigner,  so  to 
speak,  a  person  cycling  about  the  country  who 
was  just  taking  a  ten  minutes'  peep  at  the  place 
to  gratify  an  idle  curiosity.  But  who  was  she— 
that  other  old  woman;  and  what  did  she  want 
hunting  about  there  in  this  old  forsaken  church- 
yard? was  doubtless  what  each  of  those  two  was 
saying  to  herself.  And  by-and-by  their  curiosity 
got  the  better  of  them;  then  contrived  to  meet  at 
one  stone  which  they  both  appeared  anxious  to 
examine. 

I  had  anticipated  this,  and  no  sooner  were 
they  together  than  I  was  down  on  my  knees  bus- 
ily pulling  the  ivy  aside  from  a  stone  three  or 
four  yards  from  theirs,  absorbed  in  my  business. 
They  bade  each  other  good  day  and  said  some- 
thing about  the  hot  weather,  which  led  one  to 
remark  that  she  had  found  it  very  trying  as  she 


296       A  TRAVELLER  IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

had  left  home  early  to  walk  to  Salisbury  to  take 
the  train  to  Codford,  and  from  there  she  had 
walked  again  to  Chitterne.  Oddly  enough,  the 
other  old  woman  had  also  been  travelling  all 
day,  but  from  an  opposite  direction,  over  Somer- 
set way,  just  to  visit  Chitterne.  It  seemed  an 
astonishing  thing  to  them  when  it  came  out  that 
they  had  both  been  looking  forward  for  years 
to  this  visit,  and  that  it  should  have  been  made 
on  the  same  day,  and  that  they  should  have  met 
there  in  that  same  forsaken  little  graveyard.  It 
seemed  stranger  still  when  they  came  to  tell 
why  they  had  made  this  long-desired  visit.  They 
were  both  natives  of  the  village,  and  had  both 
left  it  early  in  life,  one  aged  seven,  the  other  ten; 
they  had  left  much  about  the  same  time,  and  had 
never  returned  until  now.  And  they  were  now 
here  with  the  same  object — just  to  find  the 
graves,  unmarked  by  a  stone,  where  the  mother 
of  one  of  them,  the  grandparents  of  both,  and 
other  relatives  they  still  remembered  had  been 
buried  more  than  half  a  century  ago.  They  were 
surprised  and  troubled  at  their  failure  to  iden- 
tify the  very  spots  where  the  mounds  used  to  be. 
"It  do  all  look  so  different,"  said  one,  "an'  the 


IN  CHITTERNE  CHURCHYARD     297 

old  stones  be  mostly  gone."  Finally,  when  they 
told  their  names  and  their  fathers'  names — 
farm-labourers  both — they  failed  to  remember 
each  other,  and  could  only  suppose  that  they 
must  have  forgotten  many  things  about  their 
far-off  childhood,  although  others  were  still  as 
well  remembered  as  the  incidents  of  yesterday. 
The  old  dames  had  become  very  friendly  and 
confidential  by  this  time.  "I  dare  say,"  I  said 
to  myself,  "that  if  I  can  manage  to  stay  to  the 
end  I  shall  see  them  embrace  and  kiss  at  part- 
ing," and  I  also  thought  that  their  strange  meet- 
ing in  the  old  village  churchyard  would  be  a 
treasured  memory  for  the  rest  of  their  lives.  I 
feared  they  would  suspect  me  of  eavesdropping, 
and  taking  out  my  penknife,  I  began  diligently 
scraping  the  dead  black  moss  from  the  letters  on 
the  stone,  after  which  I  made  pretence  of  copy- 
ing the  illegible  inscription  in  my  notebook. 
They,  however,  took  no  notice  of  me,  and  began 
telling  each  other  what  their  lives  had  been  since 
they  left  Chitterne.  Both  had  married  working 
men  and  had  lost  their  husbands  many  years  ago ; 
one  was  sixty-nine,  the  other  in  her  sixty-sixth 
year,  and  both  were  strong  and  well  able  to  work, 


298       A  TRAVELLER  IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

although  they  had  had  hard  lives.  Then  in  a  tone 
of  triumph,  their  faces  lighting  up  with  a  kind 
of  joy,  they  informed  each  other  that  they  had 
never  had  to  go  to  the  parish  for  relief.  Each 
was  anxious  to  be  first  in  telling  how  it  had  come 
about  that  she,  the  poor  widow  of  a  working 
man,  had  been  so  much  happier  in  her  old  age 
than  so  many  others.  So  eager  were  they  to  tell 
it  that  when  one  spoke  the  other  would  cut  in 
long  before  she  finished,  and  when  they  talked 
together  it  was  not  easy  to  keep  the  two  narra- 
tives distinct.  One  was  the  mother  of  four 
daughters,  all  still  unmarried,  earning  their  own 
livings,  one  in  a  shop,  another  a  sempstress,  two 
in  service  in  good  houses,  earning  good  wages. 
Never  had  woman  been  so  blessed  in  her  chil- 
dren! They  would  never  see  their  mother  go 
to  the  House !  The  other  had  but  one,  a  son,  and 
not  many  like  him;  no  son  ever  thought  more  of 
his  mother.  He  was  at  sea,  but  every  nine  to  ten 
months  he  was  back  in  Bristol,  and  then  on  to 
visit  her,  and  never  let  a  month  pass  without 
writing  to  her  and  sending  money  to  pay  her 
rent  and  keep  a  nice  comfortable  home  for  him. 
They  congratulated  one  another;  then  the 


IN  CHITTERNE  CHURCHYARD  299 

mother  of  four  said  she  always  thanked  God  for 
giving  her  daughters,  because  they  were  women 
and  could  feel  for  a  mother.  The  other  replied 
that  it  was  true,  she  had  often  seen  it,  the  way 
daughters  stuck  to  their  mother — until  they 
married.  She  was  thankful  to  have  a  son ;  a  man, 
she  said,  is  a  man  and  can  go  out  in  the  world 
and  do  things,  and  if  he  is  a  good  son  he  will 
never  see  his  mother  want. 

The  other  was  nettled  at  that  speech.  "Of 
course  a  man's  a  man,"  she  returned,  "but  we 
all  know  what  men  are.  They  are  all  right  till 
they  pick  up  with  a  girl  who  wants  all  their 
wages;  then  everyone,  mother  and  all,  must  be 
given  up."  But  a  daughter  was  a  daughter  al- 
ways; she  had  four,  she  was  happy  to  say. 

This  made  matters  worse.  "Daughters  always 
daughters!"  came  the  quick  rejoinder.  "I 
never  learned  that  before.  What,  my  son  take 
up  with  a  girl  and  leave  his  old  mother  to  starve 
or  go  to  the  workhouse!  I  never  heard  such  a 
foolish  thing  said  in  my  life!"  And,  being  now 
quite  angry,  she  looked  round  for  her  basket  and 
shawl  so  as  to  get  away  as  quickly  as  possible 
from  that  insulting  woman;  but  the  other,  guess- 


300       A  TRAVELLER  IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

ing  her  intention,  was  too  quick  for  her  and 
started  at  once  to  the  gate,  but  after  going  four 
or  five  steps  turned  and  delivered  her  last  shot: 
"Say  what  you  like  about  your  son,  and  I  don't 
doubt  he's  been  good  to  you,  and  I  only  hope 
it'll  always  be  the  same;  but  what  I  say  is,  give 
me  a  daughter,  and  I  know,  ma'am,  that  if  you 
had  a  daughter  you'd  be  easier  in  your  mind!" 
Having  spoken,  she  made  for  the  gate,  and  the 
other,  stung  in  some  vital  part  by  the  last  words, 
stood  motionless,  white  with  anger,  staring  after 
her,  first  in  silence,  but  presently  she  began  talk- 
ing audibly  to  herself.  "My  son — my  son  pick 
up  with  a  girl!  My  son  leave  his  mother  to  go 
on  the  parish!" — but  I  stayed  to  hear  no  more; 
it  made  me  laugh  and — it  was  too  sad. 


XXXV 
A  HAUNTER  OF  CHURCHYARDS 

I  SAID  a  little  while  ago  that  when  staying 
at  a  village  I  am  apt  to  become  a  haunter  of 
its  churchyard;  but  I  go  not  to  it  in  the  spirit  of 
our  well-beloved  Mr.  Pecksniff.  He,  it  will  be 
remembered,  was  accustomed  to  take  an  occa- 
sional turn  among  the  tombs  in  the  graveyard 
at  Amesbury,  or  wherever  it  was,  to  read  and 
commit  to  memory  the  pious  and  admonitory 
phrases  he  found  on  the  stones,  to  be  used  later 
as  a  garnish  to  his  beautiful,  elevating  talk.  The 
attraction  for  me,  which  has  little  to  do  with 
inscriptions,  was  partly  stated  in  the  last  sketch, 
and  I  may  come  to  it  again  by-and-by. 

Nevertheless,  I  cannot  saunter  or  sit  down 
among  these  memorials  without  paying  some  at- 
tention to  the  lettering  on  them,  and  always  with 
greatest  interest  in  those  which  time  and 
weather  and  the  corrosive  lichen  have  made  il- 

301 


302        A   TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

legible.  The  old  stones  that  are  no  longer  vis- 
ited, on  which  no  fresh-gathered  flower  is  ever 
laid,  which  mark  the  last  resting-places  of  the 
men  and  women  who  were  once  the  leading 
members  of  the  little  rustic  community,  and  are 
now  forgotten  for  ever,  whose  bones  for  a  cen- 
tury past  have  been  crumbling  to  dust.  And  the 
children's  children,  and  remoter  descendants  of 
these  dead,  where  are  they?  since  one  refuses  to 
believe  that  they  inhabit  this  land  any  longer. 
Under  what  suns,  then,  by  what  mountains  and 
what  mighty  rivers,  on  what  great  green  or  sun- 
parched  plains  and  in  what  roaring  cities  in  far- 
off  continents?  They  have  forgotten;  they  have 
no  memory  nor  tradition  of  these  buried  ones, 
nor  perhaps  even  know  the  name  of  this  village 
where  they  lived  and  died.  Yet  we  believe  that 
something  from  these  same  dead  survives  in 
them — something,  too,  of  the  place,  the  village, 
the  soil,  an  inherited  memory  and  emotion.  At 
all  events  we  know  that,  wheresoever  they  may 
be,  that  their  soul  is  English  still,  that  they 
will  hearken  to  their  mother's  voice  when  she 
calls  and  come  to  her  from  the  very  ends  of  the 
earth. 


A  HAUNTER  OF  CHURCHYARDS  303 

As  to  the  modern  stones  with  inscriptions 
made  so  plain  that  you  can  read  them  at  a  dis- 
tance of  twenty  yards,  one  cultivates  the  art  of 
not  seeing  them,  since  if  you  look  attentively  at 
them  and  read  the  dull  formal  inscription,  the 
disgust  you  will  experience  at  their  extreme 
ugliness  will  drive  you  from  the  spot,  and  so 
cause  you  to  miss  some  delicate  loveliness  lurk- 
ing there,  like  a  violet  "half  hidden  from  the 
eye."  But  I  need  not  go  into  this  subject  here,  as 
I  have  had  my  say  about  it  in  a  well-known  book 
— Hampshire  Days. 

The  stones  I  look  at  are  of  the  seventeenth, 
eighteenth  and  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
turies, for  even  down  to  the  fifties  of  last  century 
something  of  the  old  tradition  lingered  on,  and 
not  all  the  stones  were  shaped  and  lettered  in 
imitation  of  an  auctioneer's  advertisement 
posted  on  a  barn  door. 

In  reading  the  old  inscriptions,  often  de- 
ciphered with  difficulty  after  scraping  away  the 
moss  and  lichen,  we  occasionally  discover  one 
that  has  the  charm  of  quaintness,  or  which 
touches  our  heart  or  sense  of  humour  in  such  a 
way  as  to  tempt  us  to  copy  it  into  a  note-book. 


3o4        A   TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

In  this  way  I  have  copied  a  fair  number,  and  in 
glancing  over  my  old  note-books  containing 
records  of  my  rambles  and  observations,  mostly 
natural  history,  I  find  these  old  epitaphs  scat- 
tered through  them.  But  I  have  never  copied 
an  inscription  with  the  intention  of  using  it.  And 
this  for  the  sufficient  reason  that  epitaphs  col- 
lected in  a  book  do  not  interest  me  or  anyone. 
They  are  in  the  wrong  place  in  a  book  and  can- 
not produce  the  same  effect  as  when  one  finds 
and  spells  them  out  on  a  weathered  stone  or 
mural  tablet  out  or  inside  a  village  church.  It 
is  the  atmosphere — the  place,  the  scene,  the  asso- 
ciations, which  give  it  its  only  value  and  some- 
times make  it  beautiful  and  precious.  The  stone 
itself,  its  ancient  look,  half-hidden  in  many 
cases  by  ivy,  and  clothed  over  in  many-coloured 
moss  and  lichen  and  aerial  algae,  and  the  stone- 
cutter's handiwork,  his  lettering,  and  the  epi- 
taphs he  revelled  in — all  this  is  lost  when  you 
take  the  inscription  away  and  print  it.  Take 
this  one,  for  instance,  as  a  specimen  of  a  fairly 
good  seventeenth-century  epitaph,  from  Shrew- 
ton,  a  village  on  Salisbury  Plain,  not  far  from 
Stonehenge : 


A  HAUNTER  OF  CHURCHYARDS  305 

HERE  IS  MY  HOPE  TILLTRVHP 
SHALL  SOVND  AMD  CHRIST 

FOR  ME£  DOTtt   CALL  TE/V 
JHAU  /  RISE  FR%  DfAT? 
TO  LI  FE   NOE.   M.O/?£7D 
AT 


7? 
h€RE  LIES  TC  BODY  OF  ROBET 


VYAN^BROVGH 

£•  O 

OF  Y  NAF€  W  DEPART  TH/5 

r  -T-IJ 


It  would  not  be  very  interesting  to  put  this  in 
a  book  : 

Here  is  my  hope  till  trump  shall  sound 

And  Christ  for  me  doth  call, 
Then  shall  I  rise  from  death  to  life 

No  more  to  die  at  all. 

But  it  was  interesting  to  find  it  there,  to  ex- 
amine the  old  lettering  and  think  perhaps  that 
if  you  had  been  standing  at  the  elbow  of  the  old 
lapidary,  two  and  a  half  centuries  ago,  you 


3o6        A   TRAVELLER   IN   LITTLE   THINGS 

might  have  given  him  a  wrinkle  in  the  econo- 
mising of  space  and  labour.  In  any  case,  to  find 
it  there  in  the  dim,  rich  interior  of  that  ancient 
village  church,  to  view  it  in  a  religious  or  rev- 
erent mood,  and  then  by-and-by  in  the  dusty 
belfry  to  stumble  on  other  far  older  memorials 
of  the  same  family,  and  finally,  coming  out  into 
the  sunny  churchyard,  to  come  upon  the  same 
name  once  more  in  an  inscription  which  tells 
you  that  he  died  in  1890,  aged  88.  And  you 
think  it  a  good  record  after  nine  generations, 
and  that  the  men  who  lie  under  these  wide  skies 
on  these  open  chalk  downs  do  not  degenerate. 

I  have  copied  these  inscriptions  for  a  purpose 
of  my  own,  just  as  one  plucks  a  leaf  or  a  flower 
and  drops  it  between  the  pages  of  a  book  he  is 
reading  to  remind  him  on  some  future  occasion, 
when  by  chance  he  finds  it  again  on  opening 
the  book  at  some  future  time,  of  the  scene,  the 
place,  the  very  mood  of  the  moment. 

Now,  after  all  said,  I  am  going  to  quote  a  few 
of  my  old  gleanings  from  gravestones,  not  be- 
cause they  are  good  of  their  kind — my  collec- 
tion will  look  poor  and  meagre  enough  com- 
pared with  those  that  others  have  made — but  I 


A  HAUNTER  OF  CHURCHYARDS          307 

have  an  object  in  doing  it  which  will  appear 
presently  in  the  comments. 

Always  the  best  epitaphs  to  be  found  in  books 
are  those  composed  by  versifiers  for  their  own 
and  the  reading  public's  amusement,  and  always 
the  best  in  the  collection  are  the  humorous  ones. 

The  first  collection  I  ever  read  was  by  the 
Spanish  poet,  Martinez  de  la  Rosa,  and  al- 
though I  was  a  boy  then,  I  can  still  remember 
one: 

Aqui  Fray  Diego  reposa, 
Jamas  hiso  otra  cosa. 

Which,  translated  literally,  means: 

Here  Friar  James  reposes: 
He  never  did  anything  else. 

This  does  well  enough  on  the  printed  page,  but 
would  shock  the  mind  if  seen  on  a  gravestone, 
and  perhaps  the  rarest  of  all  epitaphs  are  the 
humorous  ones.  But  one  is  pleased  to  meet  with 
the  unconsciously  humorous;  the  little  titilla- 
tion,  the  smile,  is  a  relief,  and  does  not  take  away 
the  sense  of  the  tragedy  of  life  and  the  mournful 
end. 

A  good  specimen  of  the  unconsciously  humor- 


308       A  TRAVELLER  IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

ous  epitaph  is  on  a  stone  in  the  churchyard  at 
Maddington,  a  small  village  in  the  Wiltshire 
Downs,  dated  1843 : 

These  few  lines  have  been  procured 
To  tell  the  pains  which  he  endured, 
He  was  crushed  to  death  by  the  fall 
Of  an  old  mould'ring,  tottering  wall. 
All  ye  young  people  that  pass  by 
Remember  this  and  breathe  a  sigh, 
Lord,  let  him  hear  thy  pard'ning  voice 
And  make  his  broken  bones  rejoice. 

A  better  one,  from  the  little  village  of  Mylor, 
near  Falmouth,  has  I  fancy  been  often  copied: 

His  foot  it  slipped  and  he  did  fall, 
Help !  help !  he  cried,  and  that  was  all. 

And  still  a  better  one  I  found  in  the  churchyard 
of  St.  Margaret's  at  Lynn,  to  John  Holgate, 
aged  27,  who  died  in  1712: 

He  hath  gained  his  port  and  is  at  ease, 

And  hath  escapt  ye  danger  of  ye  seas, 

His  glass  is  run  his  life  is  gone, 

Which  to  my  thought  never  did  no  man  no  wronge. 

That  last  line  is  remarkable,  for  although  its  ten 
slow  words  have  apparently  fallen  by  chance 


A  HAUNTER  OF  CHURCHYARDS  309 

into  that  form  and  express  nothing  but  a  little 
negative  praise  of  their  subject,  they  say  some- 
thing more  by  implication.  They  conceal  a 
mournful  protest  against  the  cruelty  and  injus- 
tice of  his  lot,  and  remind  us  of  the  old  Italian 
folk-song,  "O  Barnaby,  why  did  you  die?"  With 
plenty  of  wine  in  the  house  and  salad  in  the  gar- 
den, how  wrong,  how  unreasonable  of  you  to 
die!  But  even  while  blaming  you  in  so  many 
words,  we  know,  O  Barnaby,  that  the  decision 
came  not  from  you,  and  was  an  outrage,  but 
dare  not  say  so  lest  he  himself  should  be  listen- 
ing, and  in  his  anger  at  one  word  should  take  us 
away  too  before  our  time.  It  is  unconsciously 
humorous,  yet  with  the  sense  of  tears  in  it. 

But  there  is  no  sense  of  tears  in  the  uncon- 
scious humour  of  the  solemn  or  pompous  epi- 
taph composed  by  the  village  ignoramus. 

A  century  ago  the  village  idiot  was  almost  al- 
ways a  member  of  the  little  rustic  community, 
and  was  even  useful  to  it  in  two  distinct  ways. 
He  was  "God's  Fool,"  and  compassion  and 
sweet  beneficent  instinct,  or  soul  growths,  flour- 
ished the  more  for  his  presence;  and  secondly, 
he  was  a  perpetual  source  of  amusement,  a  sort 


3io        A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

of  free  cinema  provided  by  Nature  for  the  chil- 
dren's entertainment.  I  am  not  sure  that  his 
removal  has  not  been  a  loss  to  the  little  rural 
centres  of  life. 

Side  by  side  with  the  village  idiot  there  was 
the  pompous  person  who  could  not  only  read  a 
book,  but  could  put  whole  sentences  together 
and  even  make  rhymes,  and  who  on  these 
grounds  took  an  important  part  in  the  life  of 
the  community.  He  was  not  only  adviser  and 
letter-writer  to  his  neighbours,  but  often  com- 
posed inscriptions  for  their  gravestones  when 
they  were  dead.  But  in  the  best  specimen  of 
this  kind  which  I  have  come  upon,  I  feel  pretty 
sure,  from  internal  evidence,  that  the  buried 
man  had  composed  his  own  epitaph,  and  prob- 
ably designed  the  form  of  the  stone  and  its  orna- 
mentation. I  found  this  stone  in  the  church- 
yard of  Minturne  Magna,  in  Dorset.  The  stone 
was  five  feet  high  and  four  and  a  half  broad — a 
large  canvas,  so  to  speak.  On  the  upper  half  a 
Tree  of  Knowledge  was  depicted,  with  leaves 
and  apples,  the  serpent  wound  about  the  trunk, 
with  Adam  and  Eve  standing  on  either  side.  Eve 
is  extending  her  arm,  with  an  apple  in  her  open 


A  HAUNTER  OF  CHURCHYARDS  311 

hand,  to  Adam,  and  he,  foolish  man,  is  putting 
out  a  hand  to  take  it.  Then  follows  the  extraor- 
dinary inscription: 

Here  lyeth  the  Body 

Of  Richard  Elambert, 

Late  of  Holnust,  who  died 

June  6,  in  the  year   1805,  in  the 

100  year  of  his  age. 
Neighbours  make  no  stay, 
Return  unto  the  Lord, 
Nor  put  it  off  from  day  to  day, 
For  Death's  a  debt  ye  all  must  pay. 
Ye  knoweth  not  how  soon, 
It  may  be  the  next  moment, 
Night,  morning  or  noon. 
I  set  this  as  a  caution 
To  my  neighbours  in  rime, 
God  give  grace  that  you 
May  all  repent  in  time. 
For  what  God  has  decreed 
We  surely  must  obey, 
For  when  please  God  to  send 
His  death's  dart  into  us  so  keen, 
O  then  we  must  go  hence 
And  be  no  more  here  seen. 

ALSO 

Handy  lyeth  here 

Dianna  Elambert, 

Which  was  my  only  daughter  dear, 

Who  died  Jan.   10,  1776, 
In  the  1 8th  year  of  her  age. 


3i2        A   TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

Poor  Diana  deserved  a  less  casual  word! 

Enough  of  that  kind.  The  next  to  follow  is 
the  quite  plain,  sensible,  narrative  inscription, 
with  no  pretension  to  fine  diction,  albeit  in 
rhyme.  Oddly  enough  the  most  perfect  ex- 
ample I  have  found  is  in  the  churchyard  at  Kew, 
which  seems  too  near  to  London: 

Here  lyith  the  bodies  of  Robert  and  Ann 
Plaistow,  late  of  Tyre,  Edghill,  in  Warwickshire, 

Dyed  August  23,  1728. 
At  Tyre  they  were  born  and  bred 
And  in  the  same  good  lives  they  led, 
Until  they  come  to  married  state, 
Which  was  to  them  most  fortunate. 
Near  sixty  years  of  mortal  life 
They  were  a  happy  man  and  wife, 
And  being  so  by  Nature  tyed 
When  one  fell  sick  the  other  dyed, 
And  both  together  laid  in  dust 
To  await  the  rising  of  the  just. 
They  had  six  children  born  and  bred, 
And  five  before  them  being  dead, 
Their  only  then  surviving  son 
Hath  caused  this  stone  for  to  be  done. 

After  this  little  masterpiece  I  will  quote  no 
other  in  this  class. 

After  copying  some  scores  of  inscriptions, 
we  find  that  there  has  always  been  a  convention 


A  HAUNTER  OF  CHURCHYARDS  313 

or  fashion  in  such  things,  and  that  it  has  been 
constantly  but  gradually  changing  during  the 
last  three  centuries.  Very  few  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  which  are  the  best,  are  now  de- 
cipherable, out  of  doors  at  all  events.  In  an  old 
graveyard  you  will  perhaps  find  two  or  three 
among  two  or  three  hundred  stones,  yet  you  be- 
lieve that  two  to  three  hundred  years  ago  the 
small  space  was  as  thickly  peopled  with  stones 
as  now.  The  two  or  three  or  more  that  have 
not  perished  are  of  the  very  hardest  kind  of 
stone,  and  the  old  letters  often  show  that  they 
were  cut  with  great  difficulty.  We  also  find  that 
apart  from  the  convention  of  the  age  or  time, 
there  were  local  conventions  or  fashions.  In 
some  parts  of  the  South  of  England  you  find 
numbers  of  enormous  stones  five  feet  high  and 
nearly  as  broad.  This  mode  has  long  vanished. 
But  you  find  a  resemblance  in  the  inscriptions 
as  well.  Thus,  wherever  the  Methodists  ob- 
tained a  firm  hold  on  the  community,  you  find 
the  spirit  of  ugliness  appearing  in  the  village 
churchyard  from  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century  onwards,  when  the  old  ornate  and  beau- 
tiful stones  with  figures  of  winged  cherubs  bear- 


3i4        A   TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

ing  torches,  scattering  flowers  or  blowing  trum- 
pets, were  the  usual  decorations,  giving  place 
to  the  plain  or  ugly  stone  with  its  square  ugly 
lettering  and  the  dull  monotonous  form  of  the 
inscription.  "To  the  memory  of  Mr.  Buggins 
of  this  parish,  who  died  on  February  27th,  1801, 
aged  67."  And  then,  to  save  trouble  and  ex- 
pense, a  verse  from  a  hymn,  or  the  simple  state- 
ment that  he  is  asleep  in  Jesus,  or  is  awaiting 
the  resurrection. 

I  am  inclined  to  blame  Methodism  for  these 
horrors  simply  because  it  is,  as  we  know,  the 
cult  of  ugliness,  but  there  may  have  been  another 
cause  for  the  change;  it  was  perhaps  to  some 
extent  a  reaction  against  the  stilted,  the  pompous 
and  silly  epitaph  which  one  finds  most  common 
in  the  first  half  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

Here  is  a  perfect  specimen  which  I  found  at 
St.  Just,  in  Cornwall,  to  a  Martin  Williams, 
1771: 

Life's  but  a  snare,  a  Labyrinth  of  Woe 

Which  wretched  Man  is  doomed  to  struggle  through. 

To-day  he's  great,  to-morrow  he's  undone, 

And  thus  with  Hope  and  Fear  he  blunders  on, 

Till  some  disease,  or  else  perhaps  old  Age 

Calls  us  poor  Mortals  trembling  from  the  Stage. 


A  HAUNTER  OF  CHURCHYARDS  315 

An  amusing  variant  of  one  of  the  commoner 
forms  of  that  time  appears  at  Lelant,  a  Cornish 
village  near  St.  Ives: 

What  now  you  are  so  once  was  me, 
What  now  I  am  that  you  will  be, 
Therefore  prepare  to  follow  me. 

No  less  remarkable  in  grammar  as  in  the  iden- 
tical or  perfect  rhyme  in  the  first  and  third  lines. 
The  author  or  adapter  could  have  escaped  this 
by  making  the  two  first  the  expression  of  the 
person  buried  beneath,  and  the  third  the  com- 
ment from  the  outsider,  as  follows: 
\ 

Therefore  prepare  to  follow  she. 

It  was  a  woman,  I  must  say. 

This  form  of  epitaph  is  quite  common,  and  I 
need  not  give  here  more  examples  from  my 
notes,  but  the  better  convention  coming  down 
from  the  preceding  age  goes  on  becoming  more 
and  more  modified  all  through  the  eighteenth, 
and  even  to  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. 

The  following  from  St.  Erth,  a  Cornish  vil- 
lage, is  a  most  suitable  inscription  on  the  grave 


316       A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

of  an  old  woman  who  was  a  nurse  in  the  same 
family  from  i7£jo  to  1814: 

Time  rolls  her  ceaseless  course;  the  race  of  yore 
That  danced  our  infancy  on  their  knee 
And  told  our  wondering  children  Legends  lore 
Of  strange  adventures  haped  by  Land  and  Sea, 
How  are  they  blotted  from  the  things  that  be! 

There  are  many  beautiful  stones  and  appro- 
priate inscriptions  during  all  that  long  period, 
in  spite  of  the  advent  of  Mr.  Buggins  and  his 
ugliness,  and  the  charm  and  pathos  is  often  in  a 
phrase,  a  single  line,  as  in  this  from  St.  Keverne, 
1710,  a  widow's  epitaph  on  her  husband: 

Rest  here  awhile,  thou  dearest  part  of  me. 

But  let  us  now  get  back  another  century  at  a 
jump,  to  the  Jacobean  and  Caroline  period.  And 
for  these  one  must  look  as  a  rule  in  interiors, 
seeing  that,  where  exposed  to  the  weather,  the 
lettering,  if  not  the  whole  stone,  has  perished. 
Perhaps  the  best  specimen  of  the  grave  inscrip- 
tion, lofty  but  not  pompous,  of  that  age  which 
I  have  met  with  is  on  a  tablet  in  Ripon  Cathe- 
dral to  Hugh  de  Ripley,  a  locally  important 
man  who  died  in  1637: 


A  HAUNTER  OF  CHURCHYARDS  317 

Others  seek  titles  to  their  tombs 
Thy  deeds  to  thy  name  prove  new  wombes 
And  scutcheons  to  deck  their  Herse 
Which  thou  need'st  not  like  teares  and  vers. 
If  I  should  praise  thy  thriving  witt 
Or  thy  weighed  judgment  serving  it 
Thy  even  and  thy  like  straight  ends 
Thy  pitie  to  God  and  to  friends 
The  last  would  still  the  greatest  be 
And  yet  all  jointly  less  than  thee. 
Thou  studiedst  conscience  more  than  fame 
Still  to  thy  gathered  selfe  the  same. 
Thy  gold  was  not  thy  saint  nor  welth 
Purchased  by  rapine  worse  than  stealth 
Nor  did'st  thou  brooding  on  it  sit 
Not  doing  good  till  death  with  it. 
This  many  may  blush  at  when  they  see 
What  thy  deeds  were  what  theirs  should  be. 
Thou'st  gone  before  and  I  wait  now 
T'expect  my  when  and  wait  my  how 
Which  if  my  Jesus  grant  like  thine 
Who  wets  my  grave's  no  friend  of  mine. 

Rather  too  long  for  my  chapter,  but  I  quote  it 
for  the  sake  of  the  last  four  lines,  characteristic 
of  that  period,  the  age  of  conceits,  of  the  love 
of  fantasticalness,  of  Donne,  Crashaw,  Vaughan. 
A  jump  from  Ripon  of  600  odd  miles  to  the 
little  village  of  Ludgvan,  near  Penzance,  brings 
us  to  a  tablet  of  nearly  the  same  date,  1635,  and 
an  inscription  conceived  in  the  same  style  and 


3i8        A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

spirit.  It  is  interesting,  on  account  of  the  name 
of  Catherine  Davy,  an  ancestress  of  the  famous 
Sir  Humphry,  whose  marble  statue  stands  be- 
fore the  Penzance  Market  House  facing  Mar- 
ket Jew  Street. 

Death  shall  not  make  her  memory  to  rott 
Her  virtues  were  too  great  to  be  forgott. 
Heaven  hath  her  soul  where  it  must  still  remain 
The  world  her  worth  to  blazon  forth  her  fame 
The  poor  relieved  do  honour  and  bless  her  name. 
Earth,  Heaven,  World,  Poor,  do  her  immortalize 
Who  dying  lives  and  living  never  dies. 

Here  is  another  of  1640: 

Here  lyeth  the  body  of  my  Husband  deare 
Whom  next  to  God  I  did  most  love  and  fear. 
Our  loves  were  single :  we  never  had  but  one 
And  so  I'll  be  although  that  thou  art  gone. 

Which  means  that  she  has  no  intention  of  marry- 
ing again.  Why  have  I  set  this  inscription 
down?  Solely  to  tell  how  I  copied  it.  I  saw  it 
on  a  brass  in  the  obscure  interior  of  a  small 
village  church  in  Dorset,  but  placed  too  high  up 
on  the  wall  to  be  seen  distinctly.  By  piling  sev- 
en hassocks  on  top  of  one  another  I  got  high  up 
enough  to  read  the  date  and  inscription,  but  be- 
fore securing  the  name  I  had  to  get  quickly 


A  HAUNTER  OF  CHURCHYARDS  319 

down  for  fear  of  falling  and  breaking  my  neck. 
The  hassocks  had  added  five  feet  to  my  six. 

The  convention  of  that  age  appears  again  in 
the  following  inscription  from  a  tablet  in  Alder- 
maston  church,  in  that  beautiful  little  Berkshire 
village,  once  the  home  of  the  Congreves: 

Like  borne,  like  new  borne,  here  like  dead  they  lie, 
Four  virgin  sisters  decked  with  pietie 
Beauty  and  other  graces  which  commend 
And  made  them  like  blessed  in  the  end. 

Which  means  they  were  very  much  like  each 
other,  and  were  all  as  pure  in  heart  as  new-born 
babes,  and  that  they  all  died  unmarried. 

Where  the  epitaph-maker  of  that  time  occa- 
sionally went  wrong  was  in  his  efforts  to  get  his 
fantasticalness  in  willy-nilly,  or  in  a  silly  play 
upon  words,  as  in  the  following  example  from 
the  little  village  of  Boyton  on  the  Wylie  river, 
on  a  man  named  Barnes,  who  died  in  1638: 

Stay  Passenger  and  view  a  stack  of  corne 
Reaped  and  laid  up  in  the  Almighty's  Barne 
Or  rather  Barnes  of  Choyce  and  precious  grayne 
Put  in  his  garner  there  still  to  remaine. 

But  in  the  very  next  village — that  of  Stockton 
— I  came  on  the  best  I  have  found  of  that  time. 


320        A.  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

It  is,  however,  a  little  earlier  in  time,  before 
fantasticalness  came  into  fashion,  and  in  spirit 
is  of  the  nobler  age.  It  is  to  Elizabeth  Pote- 
cary,  who  died  in  1590. 

Here  she  interred  lies  deprived  of  breath 

Whose  light  of  virtue  once  on  Earth  did  shyne 

Who  life  contemned  ne  feared  ghostly  death 

Whom  worlde  ne  worldlye  cares  could  cause  repine 

Resolved  to  die  with  hope  in  Heaven  placed 

Her  Christ  to  see  whom  living  she  embraced 

In  paynes  most  fervent  still  in  zeal  most  strong 

In  death  delighting  God  to  magnifye 

How  long  will  thou  forgett  me  Lord !  this  cry 

In  greatest  pangs  was  her  sweet  harmonye 

Forgett  thee?    No!  he  will  not  thee  forgett 

In  books  of  Lyfe  thy  name  for  aye  is  set. 

And  with  Elizabeth  Potecary,  that  dear  lady 
dead  these  three  centuries  and  longer,  I  must 
bring  this  particular  Little  Thing  to  an  end. 


XXXVI 

THE  DEAD  AND  THE  LIVING 

THE  last  was  indeed  in  essence  a  small  thing, 
but  was  running  to  such  a  great  length  it 
had  to  be  ended  before  my  selected  best  inscrip- 
tions were  used  up,  also  before  the  true  answer 
to  the  question:  "Why,  if  inscriptions  do  not 
greatly  interest  me,  do  I  haunt  churchyards?" 
was  given.  Let  me  give  it  now:  it  will  serve  as 
a  suitable  conclusion  to  what  has  already  been 
said  on  the  subject  in  this  and  in  a  former  book. 
When  we  have  sat  too  long  in  a  close,  hot, 
brilliantly-lighted,  over-crowded  room,  a  sense 
of  unutterable  relief  is  experienced  on  coming 
forth  into  the  pure,  fresh,  cold  night  and  filling 
our  lungs  with  air  uncontaminated  with  the 
poisonous  gases  discharged  from  other  lungs.  An 
analogous  sense  of  immense  relief,  of  escape 
from  confinement  and  joyful  liberation,  is  ex- 
perienced mentally  when  after  long  weeks  or 

321 


322       A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

months  in  London  I  repair  to  a  rustic  village. 
Yet,  like  the  person  who  has  in  his  excitement 
been  inhaling  poison  into  his  system  for  long 
hours,  I  am  not  conscious  of  the  restraint  at  the 
time.  Not  consciously  conscious.  The  mind  was 
too  exclusively  occupied  with  itself — its  own 
mind  affairs.  The  cage  was  only  recognised  as 
a  cage,  an  unsuitable  habitation,  when  I  was  out 
of  it.  An  example,  this,  of  the  eternal  dishar- 
mony between  the  busy  mind  and  nature — or 
Mother  Nature,  let  us  say;  the  more  the  mind 
is  concentrated  on  its  own  business  the  blinder 
we  are  to  the  signals  of  disapproval  on  her 
kindly  countenance,  the  deafer  to  her  warning 
whispers  in  our  ear. 

The  sense  of  relief  is  chiefly  due  to  the  arti- 
ficiality of  the  conditions  of  London  or  town 
life,  and  no  doubt  varies  greatly  in  strength  in 
town  and  country-bred  persons;  in  me  it  is  so 
strong  that  on  first  coming  out  to  where  there 
are  woods  and  fields  and  hedges,  I  am  almost 
moved  to  tears. 

We  have  recently  heard  the  story  of  the  little 
East-end  boy  on  his  holiday  in  a  quiet  country 
spot,  who  exclaimed :  "How  full  of  sound  the 


THE  DEAD  AND  THE  LIVING  323 

country  is!  Now  in  London  we  can't  hear  the 
sound  because  of  the  noises."  And  as  with  sound 
— the  rural  sounds  that  are  familar  from  of  old 
and  find  an  echo  in  us — so  with  everything:  we 
do  not  hear  nor  see  nor  smell  nor  feel  the  earth, 
which  has  been  man's  habitation  for  so  long  a 
period,  the  years  that  run  to  millions,  that  it 
has  "entered  the  soul";  an  environment  with 
which  he  is  physically  and  mentally,  in  such  per- 
fect harmony  that  it  is  like  an  extension  of  him- 
self into  the  surrounding  space.  Sky  and  cloud 
and  wind  and  rain,  and  rock  and  soil  and  water, 
and  flocks  and  herds  and  all  wild  things,  with 
trees  and  flowers — everywhere  grass  and  ever- 
lasting verdure — it  is  all  part  of  men,  and  is  me, 
as  I  sometimes  feel  in  a  mystic  mood,  even  as  a 
religious  man  in  a  like  mood  feels  that  he  is  in 
a  heavenly  place  and  is  a  native  there,  one 
with  it. 

Another  less  obvious  cause  of  my  feeling  is 
that  the  love  of  our  kind  cannot  exist,  or  at  all 
events  not  unmixed  with  contempt  and  various 
other  unpleasant  ingredients,  in  people  who  live 
and  have  their  being  amidst  thousands  and  mil- 
lions of  their  fellow-creatures  herded  together. 


324       A  TRAVELLER  IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

The  great  thoroughfares  in  which  we  walk  are 
peopled  with  an  endless  procession,  an  innum- 
erable multitude;  we  hardly  see  and  do  not  look 
at  or  notice  them,  knowing  beforehand  that  we 
do  not  know  and  never  will  know  them  to  our 
dying  day;  from  long  use  we  have  almost  ceased 
to  regard  them  as  fellow-beings. 

I  recall  here  a  tradition  of  the  Incas,  which 
tells  that  in  the  beginning  a  benevolent  god  cre- 
ated men  on  the  slopes  of  the  Andes,  and  that 
after  a  time  another  god,  who  was  at  enmity 
with  the  first,  spitefully  transformed  them  into 
insects.  Here  we  have  a  contrary  effect — it  is 
the  insects  which  have  been  transformed;  the 
millions  of  wood-ants,  let  us  say,  inhabiting  an 
old  and  exceedingly  populous  nest  have  been 
transformed  into  men,  but  in  form  only;  men- 
tally they  are  still  ants,  all  silently,  everlast- 
ingly hurrying  by,  absorbed  in  their  ant-busi- 
ness. You  can  almost  smell  the  formic  acid. 
Walking  in  the  street,  one  of  the  swarming  mul- 
titude, you  are  in  but  not  of  it.  You  are  only 
one  with  the  others  in  appearance;  in  mind  you 
are  as  unlike  them  as  a  man  is  unlike  an  ant, 
and  the  love  and  sympathy  you  feel  towards 


THE  DEAD  AND  THE  LIVING  325 

them  is  about  equal  to  that  which  you  experience 
when  looking  down  on  the  swarm  in  a  wood- 
ants'  nest. 

Undoubtedly  when  I  am  in  the  crowd,  poi- 
soned by  contact  with  the  crowd-mind — the 
formic  acid  of  the  spirits — I  am  not  actually  or 
keenly  conscious  of  the  great  gulf  between  me 
and  the  others,  but,  as  in  the  former  case,  the 
sense  of  relief  is  experienced  here  too  in  escap- 
ing from  it.  The  people  of  the  small  rustic 
community  have  not  been  de-humanised.  I  am  a 
stranger,  and  they  do  not  meet  me  with  blank 
faces  and  pass  on  in  ant-like  silence.  So  great 
is  the  revulsion  that  I  look  on  them  as  of  my 
kin,  and  am  so  delighted  to  be  with  them  again 
after  an  absence  of  centuries,  that  I  want  to  em- 
brace and  kiss  them  all.  I  am  one  of  them,  a 
villager  with  the  village  mind,  and  no  wish  for 
any  other. 

This  mind  or  heart  includes  the  dead  as  well 
as  the  living,  and  the  church  and  churchyard  is 
the  central  spot  and  half-way  house  or  camping- 
ground  between  this  and  the  other  world,  where 
dead  and  living  meet  and  hold  communion — a 
fact  that  is  unknown  to  or  ignored  by  persons  of 


326       A  TRAVELLER  IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

the  "better  class,"  the  parish  priest  or  vicar 
sometimes  included. 

And  as  I  have  for  the  nonce  taken  on  the  vil- 
lage mind,  I  am  as  much  interested  in  my  incor- 
poreal, invisible  neighbours  as  in  those  I  see  and 
am  accustomed  to  meet  and  converse  with  every 
day.  They  are  here  in  the  churchyard,  and  I 
am  pleased  to  be  with  them.  Even  when  I  sit, 
as  I  sometimes  do  of  an  evening,  on  a  flat  tomb 
with  a  group  of  laughing  children  round  me, 
some  not  yet  tired  of  play,  climbing  up  to  my 
side  only  to  jump  down  again,  I  am  not  oblivious 
of  their  presence.  They  are  there,  and  are  glad 
to  see  the  children  playing  among  the  tombs 
where  they  too  had  their  games  a  century  ago. 
I  notice  that  the  village  woman  passing  through 
the  ground  pauses  a  minute  with  her  eyes  resting 
on  a  certain  spot;  even  the  tired  labourer,  com- 
ing home  to  his  tea,  will  let  his  eyes  dwell  on 
some  green  mound,  to  see  sitting  or  standing 
there  someone  who  in  life  was  very  near  and 
dear  to  him,  with  whom  he  is  now  exchanging 
greetings.  But  the  old  worn-out  labourer,  who 
happily  has  not  gone  to  end  his  days  in  captivity 
in  the  bitter  Home  of  the  Poor — he,  sitting  on 


THE  DEAD  AND  THE  LIVING  327 

a  tomb  to  rest  and  basking  in  the  sunshine,  has 
a  whole  crowd  of  the  vanished  villagers  about 
him. 

It  is  useless  their  telling  us  that  when  we  die 
we  are  instantly  judged  and  packed  straight  off 
to  some  region  where  we  are  destined  to  spend 
an  eternity.  We  know  better.  Nature,  our  own 
hearts,  have  taught  us  differently.  Furthermore, 
we  have  heard  of  the  resurrection — that  the 
dead  will  rise  again  at  the  last  day;  and  with 
all  our  willingness  to  believe  what  our  masters 
tell  us,  we  know  that  even  a  dead  man  can't  be 
in  two  places  at  the  same  time.  Our  dead  are 
here  where  we  laid  them;  sleeping,  no  doubt, 
but  not  so  soundly  sleeping,  we  imagine,  as  not 
to  see  and  hear  us  when  we  visit  and  speak  to 
them.  And  being  villagers  still  though  dead, 
they  like  to  see  us  often,  whenever  we  have  a  few 
spare  minutes  to  call  round  and  exchange  a  few 
words  with  them. 

This  extremely  beautiful — and  in  its  effect 
beneficial — feeling  and  belief,  or  instinct,  or  su- 
perstition if  the  superior  inhabitants  of  the  wood- 
ants'  nest,  who  throw  their  dead  away  and 
think  no  more  about  them,  will  have  it  so — is  a 


328       A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

sweet  and  pleasant  thing  in  the  village  life  and 
a  consolation  to  those  who  are  lonely.  Let  me 
in  conclusion  give  an  instance. 

The  churchyard  I  like  best  is  situated  in  the 
village  itself,  and  is  in  use  both  for  the  dead  and 
living,  and  the  playground  of  the  little  ones,  but 
some  time  ago  I  by  chance  discovered  one  which 
was  over  half  a  mile  from  the  village;  an  ancient 
beautiful  church  and  churchyard  which  so 
greatly  attracted  me  that  in  my  rambles  in  that 
part  I  often  went  a  mile  or  two  out  of  my  way 
just  for  the  pleasure  of  spending  an  hour  or  two 
in  that  quiet  sacred  spot.  It  was  in  a  wooded 
district  in  Hampshire,  and  there  were  old  oak 
woods  all  round  the  church,  with  no  other  build- 
ing in  sight  and  seldom  a  sound  of  human  life. 
There  was  an  old  road  outside  the  gate,  but  few 
used  it.  The  tombs  and  stones  were  many  and 
nearly  covered  with  moss  and  lichen  and  half- 
draped  in  creeping  ivy.  There,  sitting  on  a 
tomb,  I  would  watch  the  small  woodland  birds 
that  made  it  their  haunt,  and  listen  to  the  deli- 
cate little  warbling  or  tinkling  notes,  and  admire 
the  two  ancient  picturesque  yew  trees  growing 
there. 


THE  DEAD  AND  THE  LIVING  329 

One  day,  while  sitting  on  a  tomb,  I  saw  a 
woman  coming  from  the  village  with  a  heavy 
basket  on  her  head,  and  on  coming  to  the  gate 
she  turned  in,  and  setting  the  basket  down 
walked  to  a  spot  about  thirty  yards  from  where 
I  sat,  and  at  that  spot  she  remained  for  several 
minutes  standing  motionless,  her  eyes  cast  down, 
her  arms  hanging  at  her  sides.  A  cottage 
woman  in  a  faded  cotton  gown,  of  a  common 
Hampshire  type,  flat-chested,  a  rather  long  oval 
face,  almost  colourless,  and  black  dusty  hair. 
She  looked  thirty-five,  but  was  probably  less 
than  thirty,  as  women  of  their  class  age  early  in 
this  county  and  get  the  toil-worn,  tired  face 
when  still  young. 

By-and-by  I  went  over  to  her  and  asked  her 
if  she  was  visiting  some  of  her  people  at  that 
spot.  Yes,  she  returned;  her  mother  and  father 
were  buried  under  the  two  grass  mounds  at  her 
feet;  and  then  quite  cheerfully  she  went  on  to 
tell  me  all  about  them — how  all  their  other 
children  had  gone  away  to  live  at  a  distance 
from  home,  and  she  was  left  alone  with  them 
when  they  grew  old  and  infirm.  They  were 
natives  of  the  village,  and  after  they  were  both 


330       A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

dead,  five  years  ago,  she  got  a  place  at  a  farm 
about  a  mile  up  the  road.  There  she  had  been 
ever  since,  but  fortunately  she  had  to  come  to 
the  village  every  week,  and  always  on  her  way 
back  she  spent  a  quarter  or  half  an  hour  with 
her  parents.  She  was  sure  they  looked  for  that 
weekly  visit  from  her,  as  they  had  no  other  rela- 
tion in  the  place  now,  and  that  they  liked  to 
hear  all  the  village  news  from  her. 

All  this  and  more  she  told  me  in  the  most  open 
way.  Like  Wordsworth's  "simple  child,"  what 
could  she  know  of  death?  But  being  a  villager 
myself  I  was  better  informed  than  Wordsworth, 
and  didn't  enter  on  a  ponderous  argument  to 
prove  to  her  that  when  people  die  they  die,  and 
being  dead,  they  can't  be  alive — therefore  to  pay 
them  a  weekly  visit  and  tell  them  all  the  news, 
was  a  mere  waste  of  time  and  breath. 


XXXVII 
A  STORY  OF  THREE  POEMS 

I  WROTE  in  the  last  sketch  but  one  of  the 
villager  with  a  literary  gift  who  composes 
the  epitaphs  in  rhyme  of  his  neighbours  when 
they  pass  away  and  are  buried  in  the  church- 
yard. This  has  served  to  remind  me  of  a  kin- 
dred subject — the  poetry  or  verse  (my  own  in- 
cluded) of  those  who  are  not  poets  by  profes- 
sion: also  of  an  incident.  Undoubtedly  there  is 
a  vast  difference  between  the  village  rhymester 
and  the  true  poet,  and  the  poetry  I  am  now  con- 
cerned with  may  be  said  to  come  somewhat  be- 
tween these  two  extremes.  Or  to  describe  it  in 
metaphor,  it  may  be  said  to  come  midway  be- 
tween the  crow  of  the  "tame  villatic  fowl"  and 
the  music  of  the  nightingale  in  the  neighbouring 
copse  or  of  the  skylark  singing  at  heaven's  gate. 
The  impartial  reader  may  say  at  the  finish  that 
the  incident  was  not  worth  relating.  Are  there 
any  such  readers?  I  doubt  it.  I  take  it  that  we 

331 


332        A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

all,  even  those  who  appear  the  most  matter-of- 
fact  in  their  minds  and  lives,  have  something  of 
the  root,  the  elements,  of  poetry  in  their  compo- 
sition. How  should  it  be  otherwise,  seeing  that 
we  are  all  creatures  of  like  passions,  all  in, some 
degree  dreamers  of  dreams;  and  as  we  all  pos- 
sess the  faculty  of  memory  we  must  at  times 
experience  emotions  recollected  in  tranquillity. 
And  that,  our  masters  have  told  us,  is  poetry. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  it  is  nothing 
of  the  sort:  it  is  the  elements,  the  essence,  the 
feeling  which  makes  poetry  if  expressed.  I 
have  a  passion  for  music,  a  perpetual  desire  to 
express  myself  in  music,  but  as  I  can't  sing  and 
can't  perform  on  any  musical  instrument,  I  can't 
call  myself  a  musician.  The  poetic  feeling  that 
is  in  us  and  cannot  be  expressed  remains  a  secret 
untold,  a  warmth  in  the  heart,  a  rapture  which 
cannot  be  communicated.  But  it  cries  to  be  told, 
and  in  some  rare  instances  the  desire  overcomes 
the  difficulty:  in  a  happy  moment  the  unknown 
language  is  captured  as  by  a  miracle  and  the 
secret  comes  out. 

And,  as  a  rule,  when  it  has  been  expressed  it 
is  put  in  the  fire,  or  locked  up  in  a  desk.  By- 


A  STORY  OF  THREE  POEMS  333 

and-by  the  hidden  poem  will  be  taken  out  and 
read  with  a  blush.  For  how  could  he,  a  prac- 
tical-minded man,  with  a  wholesome  contempt 
for  the  small  scribblers  and  people  weak  in  their 
intellectuals  generally,  have  imagined  himself  a 
poet  and  produced  this  pitiful  stuff! 

Then,  too,  there  are  others  who  blush,  but 
with  pleasure,  at  the  thought  that,  without  being 
poets,  they  have  written  something  out  of  their 
own  heads  which,  to  them  at  all  events,  reads 
just  like  poetry.  Some  of  these  little  poems  find 
their  way  into  an  editor's  hands,  to  be  looked  at 
and  thrown  aside  in  most  cases,  but  occasionally 
one  wins  a  place  in  some  periodical,  and  my 
story  relates  to  one  of  these  chosen  products— 
or  rather  to  three. 

One  summer  afternoon,  many  years  ago — but 
I  know  the  exact  date:  July  ist,  1897 — I  was 
drinking  tea  on  the  lawn  of  a  house  at  Kew, 
when  the  maid  brought  the  letters  out  to  her 
mistress,  and  she,  Mrs.  E.  Hubbard,  looking 
over  the  pile  remarked  that  she  saw  the  Selborne 
Magazine  had  come  and  she  would  just  glance 
over  it  to  see  if  it  contained  anything  to  interest 
both  of  us. 


334       A  TRAVELLER  IN  LITTLE   THINGS 

After  a  minute  or  two  she  exclaimed  "Why, 
here  is  a  poem  by  Charlie  Longman!  How 
strange — I  never  suspected  him  of  being  a 
poet!" 

She  was  speaking  of  C.  J.  Longman,  the  pub- 
lisher, and  it  must  be  explained  that  he  was  an 
intimate  friend  and  connection  of  hers  through 
his  marriage  with  her  niece,  the  daughter  of  Sir 
John  Evans  the  antiquary,  and  sister  of  Sir  Ar- 
thur Evans. 

The  poem  was  To  the  Orange-tip  Butterfly. 

Cardamines !     Cardamines ! 

Thine  hour  is  when  the  thrushes  sing, 
When  gently  stirs  the  vernal  breeze, 

When  earth  and  sky  proclaim  the  spring; 
When  all  the  fields  melodious  ring 

With  cuckoos'  calls,  when  all  the  trees 
Put  on  their  green,  then  art  thou  king 

Of  butterflies,  Cardamines. 

What  though  thine  hour  be  brief,  for  thee 

The  storms  of  winter  never  blow, 
No  autumn  gales  shall  scour  the  lea, 

Thou  scarce  shalt  feel  the  summer's  glow; 
But  soaring  high  or  flitting  low, 
Or  racing  with  the  awakening  bees 
For  spring's  first  draughts  of  honey — so 

Thy  life  is  passed,  Cardamines. 


A  STORY  OF  THREE  POEMS  335 

Cardamines !     Cardamines ! 

E'en  among  mortal  men  I  wot 
Brief  life  while  spring-time  quickly  flees 

Might  seem  a  not  ungrateful  lot: 
For  summer's  rays  are  scorching  hot 

And  autumn  holds  but  summer's  lees, 
And  swift  ere  autumn  is  forgot 

The  winter  comes,  Cardamines. 

So  well  pleased  were  we  with  this  little  lyric 
that  we  read  it  aloud  two  or  three  times  over  to 
each  other:  for  it  was  a  hot  summer's  day  when 
the  early,  freshness  and  bloom  is  over  and  the 
foliage  takes  on  a  deeper,  almost  sombre  green; 
and  it  brought  back  to  us  the  vivid  spring  feel- 
ing, the  delight  we  had  so  often  experienced  on 
seeing  again  the  orange-tip,  that  frail  delicate 
flutterer,  the  loveliest,  the  most  spiritual,  of  our 
butterflies. 

Oddly  enough,  the  very  thing  which,  one  sup- 
poses, would  spoil  a  lyric  about  any  natural  ob- 
ject— the  use  of  a  scientific  instead  of  a  popular 
name,  with  the  doubling  and  frequent  repetition 
of  it — appeared  in  this  instance  to  add  a  novel 
distinction  and  beauty  to  the  verses. 

The  end  of  our  talk  on  the  subject  was  a  sug- 
gestion I  made  that  it  would  be  a  nice  act  on 


336       A  TRAVELLER  IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

her  part  to  follow  Longman's  lead  and  write  a 
little  nature  poem  for  the  next  number  of  the 
magazine.  This  she  said  she  would  do  if  I  on 
my  part  would  promise  to  follow  her  poem  with 
one  by  me,  and  I  said  I  would. 

Accordingly  her  poem,  which  I  transcribe, 
made  its  appearance  in  the  next  number. 

MY  MOOR 

Purple  with  heather,  and  golden  with  gorse, 
Stretches  the  moorland  for  mile  after  mile; 

Over  it  cloud-shadows  float  in  their  course, 
— Grave  thoughts  passing  athwart  a  smile, — 

Till  the  shimmering  distance,  grey  and  gold, 

Drowns  all  in  a  glory  manifold. 

O  the  blue  butterflies  quivering  there, 

Hovering,  flickering,  never  at  rest, 
Quickened  flecks  of  the  upper  air 

Brought  down  by  seeing  the  earth  so  blest; 
And  the  grasshoppers  shrilling  their  quaint  delight 
At  having  been  born  in  a  world  so  bright! 

Overhead  circles  the  lapwing  slow, 

Waving  his  black-tipped  curves  of  wings, 

Calling  so  clearly  that  I,  as  I  go, 

Call  back  an  answering  "Peewit,"  that  brings 

The  sweep  of  his  circles  so  low  as  he  flies 

That  I  see  his  green  plume,  and  the  doubt  in  his  eyes. 


A  STORY  OF  THREE  POEMS  337 

Harebell  and  crowfoot  and  bracken  and  ling 

Gladden  my  heart  as  it  beats  all  aglow 
In  a  brotherhood  true  with  each  living  thing, 

From  the  crimson-tipped  bee,  and  the  chaffer  slow, 
And  the  small  lithe  lizard,  with  jewelled  eye, 
To  the  lark  that  has  lost  herself  far  in  the  sky. 

Ay  me,  where  am  I?  for  here  I  sit 

With  bricks  all  round  me,  bilious  and  brown; 

And  not  a  chance  this  summer  to  quit 

The  bustle  and  roar  and  the  cries  of  town, 

Nor  to  cease  to  breathe  this  over-breathed  air, 

Heavy  with  toil  and  bitter  with  care. 

Well, — face  it  and  chase  it,  this  vain  regret; 

Which  would  I  choose,  to  see  my  moor 
With  eyes  such  as  many  that  I  have  met, 

Which  see  and  are  blind,  which  all  wealth  leaves  poor, 
Or  to  sit,  brick-prisoned,  but  free  within, 
Freeborn  by  a  charter  no  gold  can  win? 

When  my  turn  came,  the  poem  I  wrote,  which 
duly  appeared,  was,  like  my  friend's  Moor,  a 
recollected  emotion,  a  mental  experience  re- 
lived. Mine  was  in  the  New  Forest;  when 
walking  there  on  day,  the  loveliness  of  that  green 
leafy  world,  its  silence  and  its  melody  and  the 
divine  sunlight,  so  wrought  on  me  that  for  a 
few  precious  moments  it  produced  a  mystical 
state,  that  rare  condition  of  beautiful  illusions 


338       A  TRAVELLER   IN  LITTLE  THINGS 

when  the  feet  are  off  the  ground,  when,  on  some 
occasions,  we  appear  to  be  one  with  nature,  un- 
bodied like  the  poet's  bird,  floating,  diffused 
in  it.  There  are  also  other  occasions  when  this 
transfigured  aspect  of  nature  produces  the  idea 
that  we  are  in  communion  with  or  in  the  pres- 
ence of  unearthly  entities. 

THE  VISIONARY 


It  must  be  true,  I've  somtimes  thought, 
That  beings  from  some  realm  afar 
Oft  wander  in  the  void  immense, 
Flying  from  star  to  star. 

In  silence  through  this  various  world, 
They  pass,  to  mortal  eyes  unseen, 
!And  toiling  men  in  towns  know  not 
That  one  with  them  has  been. 

But  oft,  when  on  the  woodland  falls 
A  sudden  hush,  and  no  bird  sings; 
When  leaves,  scarce  fluttered  by  the  wind, 
Speak  low  of  sacred  things, 

My  heart  has  told  me  I  should  know, 
In  such  a  lonely  place,  if  one 
From  other  worlds  came  there  and  stood 
Between  me  and  the  sun. 


A  STORY  OF  THREE  POEMS  339 

II 

At  noon,  within  the  woodland  shade 
I  walked  and  listened  to  the  birds; 
And  feeling  glad  like  them  I  sang 
A  low  song  without  words. 

When  all  at  once  a  radiance  white, 
Not  from  the  sun,  all  round  me  came ; 
The  dead  leaves  burned  like  gold,  the  grass 
Like  tongues  of  emerald  flame. 

The  murmured  song  died  on  my  lips ; 
Scarce  breathing,  motionless  I  stood; 
So  strange  that  splendour  was!  so  deep 
A  silence  held  the  wood! 

The  blood  rushed  to  and  from  my  heart, 
Now  felt  like  ice,  now  fire  in  me, 
Till  putting  forth  my  hands,  I  cried, 
"O  let  me  hear  and  see!" 

But  even  as  I  spake,  and  gazed 
Wide-eyed,  and  bowed  my  trembling  knees, 
The  glory  and  the  silence  passed 
Like  lightning  from  the  trees. 

And  pale  at  first  the  sunlight  seemed 
When  it  was  gone ;  the  leaves  were  stirred 
To  whispered  sound,  and  loud  rang  out 
The  carol  of  a  bird. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY,  LOS  ANGELES 

COLLEGE  LIBRARY 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


Book  Slip-35tn-7,'63(D8634s4)4280 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


A     001  199  218     7 


UCLA-College  Library 

PR  6015  H86tr  1921 


L  005  706  539  3 


